LATIN AMERICA

LITERATURE
Latin America:
-Also South America, inhabitants mostly
speak Romance languages.

-Religion is highly diverse although most Latin

Americans are Christian, majority of whom
are Roman Catholics and a growing number
are Protestant.
 Latin America Literature:
-Consist of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several
languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages
of the Americas.
Magical Realism -- Is an aesthetic style or genre in literature in which magical elements
are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper
understanding of reality.

Ex. THE FAMISHED ROAD

AZARO
-meaning “born to die”
CANONICAL AUTHORS:
- Pablo Neruda
- Gabriel Garcia Marguez
- Gabriel Mistral

* 19th CENTURY:
- Modernismo emerged, a poetic movement whose founding text was the Nicaraguan
Ruben Dario’s Azul (1888). This was the first Latin America literature movement to
influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin
America literature.

Literary Boom – was a literary movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s when of a
group of relative young Latin Americans novelists become
widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world.
- North America is the third largest continent and ranks fourth
among the continents in population, after Asia, Africa and
Europe.

- The principal language for the most of the North Americans

is English. Majority of the Hispanic people speak Spanish.
Many of the indigenous people use their traditional
languages.

- Christianity is the major religion of North America. The great

majority are Roman Catholics and Protestants while a small
number of them are Anglicans. Others have substantial
communities of jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians.
 -The American Literature is a body of literary works in the English language
beginning in the original 13 English colonies and continuing in the Present-
day United States.

*COLONIAL PERIOD LITERATURE:

-The earliest writings were by adventures and colonists who based their works on
European models. All writings were devoted to spiritual concerns, practical matters
of politics, and promotion of settlements. Coton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and
John Woolman were the important writers of the period.

*REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD LITERATURE:

- Writing during this time concentrated on politics and on political philosophy. Men
turned their attention from religion to government. One of these men was Benjamin
Franklin who encourages writers by being a publisher and founder of newspaper.
These were the years when the colonies broke away from England and declared
themselves as a new and independent nation.
*THE NEW NATION LITERATURE:

-Immediately following independence, writers made efforts to develop a native

literature which content – character and setting – was distinctly as American. This is
a period of beginning for poetry, fiction, and drama in America. Writing reflected
patriotic fervour and moral earnestness.

*MID-19TH CENTURY LITERATURE:

-The middle of the 19th century saw the beginning of a truly independence
American literature which is said to have come of age. This period, especially the
years 1850-55, has been called the American Renaissance or the Flowering of
American Literature. More masterpieces were written at this time than in any
other equal span of years in American history.
*THE SECOND HALF OF 19TH CENTURY LITERATURE:
-The Civil War sharply interrupted American literary activity. But as the nation
revived, many writers found subjects for fiction and poetry in their surroundings.
These were the first regional or local color writers. Mark Twain who wrote two
American classics-was the greatest regionalist writer.
By the end of the century, realism, a literary and intellectual movement that is
unlike romanticism, made writers write about life as it is actually lived and not as it
is imagined it could be. A group of journalist and writers known as “muckrakers”
protested against what they considered evils of the age-corruption, fraud, growing
industrialism, and the like. Stephen Crane and Henry James were two of the more
notable realists.

*THE MODERN PERIOD LITERATURE:

-After World War I, poetry has enjoyed a rebirth and drama has come of age
artistically. It is prose fiction, however, that is the major form of literary expression
in the 20th century.
Modernism as a major literary movement developed. Writers suggested rather
than asserted meaning in their writings. Themes were implied rather than stated so
readers had to draw their own conclusions. Symbolism, allusions, limited point of
view, and stream of consciousness were utilized.
One of the most powerful among U.S. novelists was William Faulkner who
wrote “A Rose for Emily”
- Has focused on nationalistic and regional themes. Critics against
such thematic criticism in Canadian literature, such as Frank
Davey, have argued that a focus on theme diminished the
appreciation of complexity of the literature produced in the country,
and creates the impression that Canadian literature is sociological-
oriented.

- Canada’s dominant cultures were originally British and French,

as well as aboriginal. After Prime Mininter Trudeau’s
“Announcement of Implementation of Policy of Multiculturalism
within Bilingual Framewor,” in 1971, Canada gradually become
home to a more diverse population of readers and writers.
CHARACTERISTICS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE:
1. Nature

2. Frontier Life

3. Canada’s position in the world

CATEGORIES OF CANADIAN LITERATURE:

1. Categorized it by region or province

2. Categorized it by author.

3. Divide it by literary period, such as “Canadian post moderns” or

“Canadian Poets Between the Wars"
TRAITS OF CANADIAN LITERATURE:
1. Failure as a theme

2. Humor

3. Mild anti-Americanism

4. Multiculturalism

5. Search for Self-Identity

6. The underdog hero

7. Urban vs. rural

8. Nature (and a “human vs. nature” tension)

9. Satire and irony

10. Self-deprecation

11. Self-evaluation by the reader

FRENCH-CANADIAN
LITERATURE:
- In 1802, the Lower Canada legislative library was founded, being one of
the first in Occident, first in Canadas.

- On April 25, 1849, a dramatic event occurred: the Canadian parliament

was burned by furious people along with thousands of French Canadian
books and a few hundred of English books.

- It was the rise of Quebec patriotism and the 1837 Lower Canada
Rebellion, in addition to modern system of primary school education,
which led to the rise of French-Canadian fiction. L’influence d’un live
by Philippe-Ignace-Francois Aubert de Gaspé is widely regarded as the
first French-Canadian novel.

- In 1866, Father Henri-Raymond Casgrain become one of Quebec’s first

literary theorists.
CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN LITERATURE:
LATE 20TH TO 21ST CENTURY
- Following World War II, writers such as Mavis Gallant, Mordecai
Richler, Norman Levine, Margaret Laurence and Irving Layton
brought added to the Modernist influence to Canadian literature
previously introduced by F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith and others associated
with the McGill Fortnightly.

- In the late 1970’s, science fiction fan and scholar of Canadian literature
Susan Wood helped pioneer the study of feminist science fiction, and
(along with immigrant editor Judith Merril) brought new respectability
to the study of Canadian science fiction, paving the way for the rise of
such phenomena as the French-Canadian science fiction magazine
Solaris.

- By the 1990’s, Canadian literature was viewed as some of the world’s

best.
CANADIAN AUTHORS HAVE WON INTERNATIONAL AWARDS:

* In 1992, Michael Ondaatje become the first Canadian to win the Booker
Prize for the English Patient.

* Margaret Atwood won the Booker in 2000 for the Blind Assassin and
Yann Martel won it n 2002 for Life of Pi.
UNITED STATES:
- Washington D.C. – Capital district

- July 4, 1776 – Declaration of independence, which

proclaimed their right to self-determination and their
establishment of a cooperative union.

HISTORY:
- After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions
of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported
diseases such as smallpox.
CULTURE:
American Cultural Icons:
- Apple pie
- Baseball
- American Flag

Literature, Philosophy and Arts:

- In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American Art and
Literature took most of its cues from Europe.

- 11 U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

- Ernest Hemingway – the 1954 Nobel Laureate often
named as one of the most influential writers of the 20th
century.

- One of the 1st major promoters of American theater was

impresario P.t. Barnum, team harrigan and hart-musical
comedies in N.Y.

- Emily Dickinson – virtually unknown during her lifetime,

is now recognized as an essential American poet.
END
Thank
you