The uses of failure in Mexican literature and identity
By: by John A. Ochoa.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Austin
Language: eng
Number of pages: 244
Subjects: Mexican prose literature -- History and criticism.; Failure (Psychology) in literature.; National characteristics, Mexican, in literature.; Literature and history -- Mexico.; Mexico -- Historiography.
Description: "Going beyond the simple narrative of self-defeat, this book presents a model of failure as a source of knowledge and renewed self-awareness. Studying the relationship between national identity and failure, John Ochoa revisits the foundational texts of Mexican intellectual and literary history, the "national monuments," and offers a new vision of the pivotal events that echo throughout Mexican aesthetics and politics."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-232) and index.
Table of contents: title: Education and entropy in Bernal Díaz del Castillo's War to stop time; title: Compromised free markets in El Periquillo Sarniento : teachers, albureros, and other shouters; title: Alexander von Humboldt's work on Mexico : cultural allegory, and the limits of vision; title: José Vasconcelos and the necessities of failure; title: The threats of collapse in Cambio de piel (or Fuentes the frail); title: Guillermo Gómez-Peña : bordering on madness and performing liminality; title: General Santa Anna's leg and other failings.