ABOUT THIS BOOK

A sweeping analysis of “archetypal realism” in Latin American literature and art.

Beyond Individualism examines the portrayal of collective identities over two centuries in Latin American literature and visual art. Lois Parkinson Zamora shows that many authors and artists are less concerned with singular selves than with selves-in-relation: less with individual autonomy than with communal affiliation. Their works—sometimes situated under the labels Neobaroque, magical realism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and idealism—resist the kind of psychological realism typical of European and North American novels, moving instead toward a wholly new kind of fiction.

Zamora calls this new Latin American form “archetypal realism” because its characters represent entities larger than themselves. They may embody entire communities, cultures, families, religious orders, or ideal planets. Through deft readings of collective characters in fiction by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and more alongside the art of Diego Rivera, Remedios Varo, and Xul Solar, Zamora reveals a modernity based not on Enlightenment conceptions of selfhood but on community, collectivity, and kinship.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Lois Parkinson Zamora is the Moores Distinguished Professor of literature and art at the University of Houston. Her books include The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

REVIEWS

“Zamora’s Beyond Individualism is a tour de force of literary and visual analysis. Following in the steps of her now classic The Inordinate Eye, this book offers original and insightful readings of works by figures as diverse as Francisco Javier Clavijero, Francisco Toledo, Remedios Varo, and others. Zamora’s erudition unveils unsuspected connections between the colonial and modern eras and invites us to reimagine the history of Latin American letters and art.”

— Rubén Gallo, Princeton University

“Zamora has written another major work in Latin American literary and artistic studies spanning the Baroque to the contemporary periods. Beyond Individualism is unquestionably original, impeccably researched, and beautifully written. Zamora offers close, rigorous readings of literature and art across time, place, and medium. Thanks to her deep knowledge of a dizzying span of periods and traditions, formal and thematic considerations become communicating vessels that offer new interpretations of famous works at every turn.”

— Charlotte Rogers, University of Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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