SPAN 6850 - [Apocalyptic Writing in Latin America]

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015. Conducted in Spanish.

E. Paz-Soldán.

In the last decades, Latin American literature has produced some masterpieces of (post)apocalyptic narrative, from Mario Vargas Llosa’s La guerra del fin del mundo to Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. In this seminar we will explore the literary, religious, and historical underpinnings of this subgenre, going back to the Book of Revelations, and analyze the reasons behind its current popularity. We will also take on the fundamental paradigm of civilization/barbarism, which has been a key feature of Latin American writing since the nineteenth century. Some of the authors to be discussed, apart from the ones already mentioned, are Castellanos Moya, Fogwill, and Oesterheld.