Latin American Literature and World Literature
Authors: Müller Gesine 
Published: February 2025

Latin American literature was not canonized within world literature until the 20th century. Since the colonial era, it has been perceived as navigating a tension between emancipation from and conformity to Europe; the pressure to conform to European trends was more dominant than the drive for emancipation until the rise of the Modernismo movement in the late 19th century. Since then, the literature produced has been increasingly received as independent and genuinely “Latin American.” These dynamics are closely interwoven with the reality that, from the early colonial era to the present day, decisions as to which works of Latin American literature should be included in the canon have been made in European centers of publishing, with significant publishing institutions also emerging in the United States from the mid-20th century onward. Publishing houses such as Seix Barral, Anagrama, or Alfaguara in Spain; Gallimard with the collection “La Croix du Sud” in France; Suhrkamp in Germany; Mondadori in Italy; or Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the United States have played a significant role in establishing Latin American literatures as world literature. In addition to actors in publishing and literary agencies, translation initiatives, the field of literary criticism and academia, as well as international literary organizations, literary awards, and honors such as the Nobel Prize in Literature, also contribute to the international recognition of Latin American literature as world literature. Accordingly, any discussion of the history of Latin American literature as world literature requires a reflection on how the centers of denomination have developed over the centuries: when and where did the systems originate that caused or significantly shaped the reception of literary works from Latin America as “world literature”? And what enabled certain works, but not others, to assert themselves and become part of the canon of world literature as it is known in the 21st century?

Painting a picture of the history of Latin American literature as world literature at decisive points of its crystallization allows reflecting on the making of world literature from Latin America. In Jorge Luis Borges, we encounter the first Latin American author whose work was negotiated as world literature on the strength of its broad international impact. When a group of Spanish-speaking authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa found world renown during the so-called Boom of the mid-to-late 20th century and achieved overwhelming success in the international book market for the first time in the history of Latin American literature, the decisive factors were not merely the distinctiveness of a new literary style or the realities they portrayed. Above all, it was the compatibility of their “exotic” themes with European models and reception patterns that made the Boom novels eligible for the label of “world literature.” In addition, all of the successful authors of the Boom were, without exception, men, raising questions about gender as a factor of exclusion. The history of Brazilian literature that was not part of the Boom differs significantly from that of the literatures of Spanish-speaking America, particularly with regard to the treatment of Brazilian Portuguese in the context of translation and circulation. Jorge Amado and João Guimarães Rosa became more widely known in the middle of the 20th century and stand for this own publication history, just like the author Clarice Lispector, who was only belatedly more widely recognized and experienced a new, intensified reception in the 21st century. With regard to Portuguese- and Spanish-language literature from Latin America, it can be currently stated that the 21st century has developed new terms in which to pose the question of the connections between Latin American literature and world literature by considering postglobal developments and working out innovative South-South perspectives on the question.