America Unbound
America Unbound
Encyclopedic Literature and Hemispheric Studies
This original contribution to hemispheric American literary studies comprises readings of three important novels from Mexico, Canada, and the United States: Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra, Quebecois writer Jacques Poulin's Volkswagen Blues, and Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead. The encyclopedic novel has particular generic characteristics that serve these writers as a vehicle for the reincorporation of hemispheric histories. Starting with an examination of Moby-Dick as precursor, Barrenechea shows how this narrative genre allows Fuentes, Poulin, and Silko to reflect the interconnected world of today, as well as to dramatize indigenous and colonial values in their narratives. His close attention to written documents, visual representations, and oral traditions in these encyclopedic novels sheds light on their comparative cultural relations and the New World from pole to pole. This study amplifies the scope of "America" across cultures and languages, time and tradition.
America Unbound is truly a significant contribution to not only the burgeoning fields of inter-American and hemispheric approaches to American studies and American literature but also to world literature and comparative literature more broadly.'--Review of International American Studies
An outstanding model of the benefits of deeply studying long books. . . . Presents a powerful vindication of comparative literature as a successful critical model.'--MFS: Modern Fiction Studies
Antonio Barrenechea is an associate professor of English at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He lives in Washington, DC.
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter One. The Great(er) American Paradigm: Moby-Dick and the Summa Americana
Chapter Two. From Terra Incognita to Terra Nostra: Carlos Fuentes's Reinvention of America
Chapter Three. Jacques Poulin's Archival Pathways: Volkswagen Blues as Discovery Chronicle
Chapter Four. Leslie Marmon Silko's Council Book: Hemispheric Forces in Almanac of the Dead
Chapter Five. Greater America in the Classroom: Comparative Literature, Theory, and Praxis
Notes
Bibliography
Index
