The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: June 24, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780674008427
Subjects: Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Latin American literature; Civilization; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Spanish; Literature: Classics; Latin America; Caribbean & Latin American; Literary Criticism & Collections / Hispanic American; 1948-; 20th century; History and criticism; Literature and society
Description: "The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values--artistic freedom versus communitarianism, Western values versus national cultures, the autonomy of art versus a commitment to liberation struggles--and at a time when the prestige of literature had never been higher. The projects of the historic avant-garde were revitalized by an anti-capitalist ethos and envisaged as the opposite of the republican state. "The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City" charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard. This was also a twilight of literature at the threshold of the great cultural revolution of the seventies and eighties, a revolution to which the Cold War indirectly contributed. In the eighties, civil war and military rule, together with the rapid development of mass culture and communication empires, changed the political and cultural map."--Alibris.