Latin American Readings for a Cultural Age

Book excerpt: Gathered in one volume are seven of the best essays written in the last fifteen years or so by the eminent Latin Americanist Enrico Mario Santí. The essays cover a wide range of topics in Latin American poetry, narrative, film, and intellectual history and also explore Spanish Peninsular subject-matter: the Spanish Generation of 98's response to Spain's loss of Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The essays are introduced by a long text in which the author develops a bracing critique of some dominant trends in current critical practice, and spells out an alternative methodology.