Tilting Cervantes
Subtitle: Baroque reflections on postmodern culture
By: Bruce R. Burningham.
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Nashville, Tenn
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
ISBN-13: 9780826516022; 9780826516039
Subjects: Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, -- 1547-1616 -- Influence; Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, -- 1547-1616; Mass media and literature; Popular culture and literature; Postmodernism (Literature)
Description: Tilting Cervantes examines several contemporary texts -- Fight Club, Brazil, The Matrix, and The Moor's Last Sigh, among others -- by reflecting them against a cluster of early modern Spanish and Latin American literary works, principally Don Quixote. Through a deliberate juxtaposition of these cross-cultural and cross-epochal texts, this book explores the notion that each of these varied cultural products can be read -in a very Borgesian manner- as precursors to each other, especially for contemporary readers who may not come to them in their "proper" chronological order. At the same time, and within this larger juxtaposition, this book examines the interrelated baroque and postmodern preoccupation with mirrors and self-reflexivity, and thus argues that many postmodern writers and performers do not so much break new ground as simply rediscover terrain already explored by such baroque literary figures as Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo, and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. --From publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Lope de Vega, John Ford, and the beleaguered hegemony of empire; title: Johnny Rotten, Marilyn Manson, and the limits of picaresque performance; title: Chuck Palahniuk, narrative schizophrenia, and the cervantine picaresque; title: John Lasseter's Toy Story as postmodern Don Quixote; title: Salman Rushdie, author of The Captive's Tale; title: Terry Gilliam's apocryphal Brazil; title: The Matrix : reflected.