Ethics and Politics in the Modern Spanish American Short Story

Based on recent trends in the study of ethics and literature, this course examines how Spanish American short story writers of the 20th- and 21st-centuries have used this genre to reflect on the relations among ethics, politics, and literature. Questions to be considered include: Violence and writing; truth and lies in narrative fiction; authors who warn about the perils of fiction; the possible complicity between literature and evil. The short story--traditionally a moralizing and didactic genre--seems particularly appropriate to explore these questions, and the Spanish American short story even more so, since the "violence of the letter" (in Jacques Derrida's phrase) has made itself felt consistently in the region from the days of the Conquest until today. Authors to be read include: Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Leopoldo Lugones, Horacio Quiroga, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Alejo Carpentier, Rosario Castellanos, Julio Cortázar, Augusto Monterroso, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Cristina Peri Rossi, Mayra Santos Febres and Roberto Bolaño. (1 unit)