Memoirs of "El Boom"
Many critics have written and studied about projected causes of the Boom movement in Latin American literature. It is a movement characterized by the amount of influential and important Latin American writers during a very concentrated period in the mid-Twentieth Century. The majority of the critics, including Carlos Fuentes, refer to communism and the Cuban Revolution. This research shows that the study of memoirs alters the standard view in a manner that coincides with the Boom itself. Through M.M. Bakhtin's theories of dialogics and potentiality, this research shows how the standard view tends towards closed readings of open works, however, the autobiographies and memoirs aid the reader towards a dialogue with the author which reveals the heteroglossia of characters and narratives, therefore unlocking several more potential interpretations within a single reading. José Donoso's Historia personal del Boom, and Gabriel García Márquez's Vivir para contarla serve as two prime examples of important Boom writers whose memoirs contribute to more complex and diverse readings of their ficitonal work.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
Comparative Literature
Research Advisor:
Michael Palencia-Roth
Department of Research Advisor:
Comparative Literature
Year of Publication:
2003