Gabriel Garcia Marquez facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Gabriel Garcia Marquez COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group, Inc. Gabriel Jose García Márquez: 1928—: Author, journalist One of the most influential novelists of the twentieth century, Gabriel García Márquez was a key figure in the Latin American literary renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude was read throughout the world, selling millions of copies and introducing enthusiastic readers across the globe to the genre of "magical realism." A prolific journalist as well as a novelist and short story writer, García Márquez has reported from several world capitals and remained active through the 1990s as publisher of the Colombian news magazine Cambio. A Childhood Steeped in Myth García Márquez was born on March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, Colombia , a small town on the Caribbean coast to which his mother's family had moved after her father, Colonel Nicolas Marquez Mejfa, had killed a man in a duel.

The oldest child of 11 siblings, García Márquez grew up in Aracataca with his maternal grandparents, who nurtured the budding writer's imagination with fascinating stories of local history and family events. The Colonel reminisced frequently about his youth during the country's civil wars, while the boy's grandmother, who claimed to converse with ghosts and spirits, recounted family legends and became the boy's "source of the magical, superstitious and supernatural view of reality," as García Márquez described it in a New York Times Book Review piece quoted in Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Among the more memorable family stories was that of García Márquez's parents' courtship. "This history of their forbidden love was one of the wonders of my youth," he wrote in "Seranade," a piece published in New Yorker.

So impassioned were his parents' accounts of the affair, he observed, that when he attempted to write about the subject in his novel Love in the Time of Cholera "I couldn't distinguish between life and poetry." It was the Colonel who disapproved of Gabriel Eligio Garcia as a suitor for his daughter, Luisa Santiaga; the young telegraph operator had a reputation as a womanizer and had been born out of wedlock to a fourteen-year-old girl who went on to have six other children by three different men. "It is surprising that Colonel Marquez was so disquieted by this irregular conduct," García Márquez wrote, "when the Colonel himself had fathered, in addition to his three official children, nine more by different mothers, both before and after his marriage, and all of them were welcomed by his wife as if they were her own." Gabriel Eligio Garcia was also a political conservative—the party against whom the Colonel had fought in the civil wars—and had few financial prospects. After a passionate courtship that included violin serenades, exile, and even the purchase of a revolver by which Gabriel Eligio Garcia hoped to protect himself from the Colonel's wrath, the couple eloped.

When Luisa Santiaga announced her first pregnancy, however, her parents welcomed her and her husband back to Aracataca, where the writer was born in his grandparents' house. García Márquez grew up with ten younger siblings and also has several half siblings from his father's extramarital affairs. At a Glance . . . Born March 6, 1928, in Aracataca, Colombia; son of Gabriel Eligio Garcia (a telegraph operator) and Luisa Santiaga Marquez Iguaran; married Mercedes Barcha, 1958; children: two sons. Education: Universidad nacional de Colombia, 1947-48; Universidad de Cartagena , 1948-49.

Career: Began career as a journalist, 1947; reporter for Universal, Cartegena, Colombia, late 1940s, El heraldo, Baranquilla, Colombia, 1950-52, and El espectador, Bogota, Colombia, until 1955; freelance journalist in Paris , London, and Caracas , Venezuela , 1956-58; worked for Momento magazine, Caracas, 1958-59; helped form Prensa Latina news agency, Bogota, 1959, and worked as its correspondent in Havana , Cuba , and New York City, 1961; writer, 1965–; Fundacion Habeas, founder, 1979, president, 1979–. Memberships: American Academy of Arts and Letters (honorary fellow).

Awards: Colombian Association of Writers and Artists Award, 1954; Premio Literario Esso (Colombia), 1961; Chianciano Award (Italy), 1969; Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger ( France ); 1969, Romulo Gallegos prize (Venezuela), 1971; honorary doctorate, Columbia University, 1971; Books Abroad/Neustadt International Prize for Literature, 1972; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1982; Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, 1988; Serfin Prize, 1989. Address: Home— P.O. Box 20736, Mexico City D.F., Mexico. When García Márquez was seven, his grandfather died and the boy returned to his parents in Bogota, the country's capital. During his adolescence the boy developed a love of literature, with such works as Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" inspiring him to dream of becoming a writer. First, though, he planned to obtain a law degree.

He entered the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 1947, the same year he published his first short story in El Espectador. In 1948 the country erupted in violence after the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan and the university was damaged by fire and subsequently closed. García Márquez then transferred to the Universidad de Cartagena. There he began writing journalistic pieces for El Universal, and also met Ramon Vinyes, who introduced him to the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. García Márquez abandoned his legal studies in 1949 and moved back to the Caribbean region, to the town of Barranquilla. Success as a Journalist During his two years in Barranquilla, García Márquez worked for El heraldo, the local paper, writing a regular column that included short stories, fragments, and essays about current issues. He then moved on to a job as correspondent for the Bogota paper El Espectador, writing film criticism and investigative reports. In the mid-1950s García Márquez moved to Europe , an environment he considered more amenable to his leftist political views than was the regime in his native country.

In Paris, where he was based, he continued reporting for El Espectador and also for another Colombian paper, El Independiente. He also continued to write fiction, publishing his first novel, Leaf Storm, in 1955 and completing the novel El coronel no tiene quien le escriba in 1957. Though he sometimes lived in poverty during these years, particularly after the Colombian government shut down El Independiente and left him without a regular income, García Márquez later noted that his European exile was worthwhile for the fresh perspective it gave him on Latin America . In 1957 the young journalist moved back to Latin America to help a friend, Plinio Apuleye Mendoza, edit the weekly magazine Momento in Caracas, Venezuela. The following year, García Márquez returned to Barranquilla to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mercedes Barcha Pardo, the daughter of a local pharmacist. Soon afterward, García Márquez and Mendoza resigned from Momento to protest its tacit support of U.S. foreign policy.

The pair traveled to Cuba to document the aftermath of Castro's revolution, and signed on with the new government's news agency, Prensa Latina, to establish branch offices in Bogota and eventually in New York City. In 1961 García Márquez quit Prensa Latina and moved to Mexico City, where he managed to support his family by writing screenplays and doing editorial and advertising work. Wrote Critically Acclaimed Novel Though García Márquez continued a steady production of novellas and short stories during these years, he did not achieve prominence as a writer of fiction until the publication in 1967 of his landmark novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Based on the author's childhood memories of Aracataca, the novel recounts the founding of the fictional town of Macondo by Jose Arcadio Buendia, and its subsequent rise and fall through several generations from the 1820s to the 1920s.

Blending historical events with surrealism and fantasy, the novel includes such characters as Colonel Aureliano Buendia, fomentor of 32 political rebellions and father of 17 illegitimate sons; matriarch Ursula Buendia, who witnesses the town's eventual decline; and the old gypsy scribe, Melquiades, whose mysterious manuscripts are revealed as the novel's text. The complex saga of Macondo and the Buendias, many critics noted, suggests the labyrinthine history of Latin America itself. The novel caused an immediate sensation, selling out its entire first Spanish printing within one week. So heavy was demand for the book that its publisher could scarcely keep enough copies in print. Critics hailed it as a monumental achievement; Chilean Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda was quoted in Time as calling the book "the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since the Don Quixote of Cervantes." One Hundred Years of Solitude went on to sell more than 20 million copies worldwide and to be translated into more than 30 languages. It is widely considered the most popular and influential example of magical realism, a literary style that incorporates supernatural or surreal elements within a realistic narrative.

As Faulkner had done with the American South, García Márquez had created in Macondo a world of mythic dimensions. The success of One Hundred Years of Solitude enabled García Márquez to focus full-time on his own writing. In 1975 he published the novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, about a tyrant who has held political power for so long that no one can remember his predecessor. After that, however, he vowed not to release any additional fiction until Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was removed from office. Though Pinochet was not ousted until 1989, García Márquez published the novel Cronica de una meuerte anunciada in 1982. Considered by some critics to be the author's best work, it tells the story of brothers who plot to kill their sister's husband when, after discovering on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he returns her to her family. Won Nobel Prize In 1982 García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The Swedish Academy, in bestowing the prize, cited not only the author's narrative gifts but also his demonstrated commitment to social justice.

Indeed, the problems of poverty and oppression were the theme of the laureate's acceptance speech.

Citing figures that documented thousands of violent deaths and millions of involuntary exiles linked to the political turmoil in Latin America during the 1970s, García Márquez commented that the reality of his native continent nourished in him an "insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty," and made it necessary for Latin Americans to "ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable." Implying that Latin America's cultural remoteness has made it difficult for European and North American countries to sympathize with the leftist political agendas of many of its inhabitants, he went on to ask "Why is the originality so readily granted us in literature so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change?" Criticizing wealthy countries that have "accumulated powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune," García Márquez ended on a note of hope: "We, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation

 of … a new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth." Special Access to World Leaders García Márquez decided to use his Nobel Prize money to start a newspaper.

Yet that venture never materialized, because the author was not satisfied that the independent editorial voice he sought would be respected. Sixteen years later, however, he realized his dream to go back to journalism when he bought the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio in 1999. "Journalism is the only trade that I like," he commented in the New York Times, "and I have always regarded myself as a journalist." The magazine had been struggling, but after García Márquez's purchase its circulation and ad revenues skyrocketed. The writer's international prominence, many observers noted, allowed him access to world leaders who were not always eager to speak to other reporters. "Anyone he calls will pick up the phone," said his American editor, Ash Green, in an Associated Press article. Among the friends and associates about whom García Márquez has written in Cambio are Cuban president Fidel Castro, Colombian industrialist Julio Mario Santo Domingo, and U.S. President Bill Clinton , who had once impressed the writer by reciting long passages of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury by heart.

When Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed, García Márquez defended the president, according to New York Times reporter Larry Rohter, by asking "Is it fair that this rare example of the human species must squander his historic destiny just because he couldn't find a safe place to make love?" García Márquez's reentry into journalism was not without significant risks. Unlike the more neutral American press, the Colombian media take "a strong position in defense of a democratic state rather than observing from an impartial perch," as Washington Post writer Scott Wilson pointed out. "Reporting in Colombia, particularly by Colombians," Wilson noted, "has long been a perilous vocation. But mounting violence, combined with the weakness of public institutions and the blurry line between journalism and advocacy in a country at war with itself, have increasingly placed journalists high on the list of targets." In the first ten months of 2001, nine journalist were killed in Colombia and dozens received death threats. Despite such dangers, García Márquez continued actively reporting on his country's decades-long war between Marxist guerillas and government forces, as well as on controversial issues in other parts of Latin America.

Among García Márquez's political books from this period are Clandestine in Chile : The Adventures of Miguel Littin, a nonfiction account of filmmaker Littin's return to Pinochet's Chile after a period of self-imposed exile. The Chilean government, outraged by the book's content, ordered some 15,000 copies of it burned. In 1997 García Márquez published News of a Kidnapping, based on his investigation of Colombian drug cartels and their destructive influence on that nation's social fabric. "News of a Kidnapping not only provides a fascinating anatomy of 'one episode in the biblical holocaust that has been consuming Colombia for more than 20 years,'" wrote Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, "but also offers the reader new insights into the surreal history of Mr. García Márquez's native country. Indeed, the reader is reminded by this book that the magical realism employed by Mr.

García Márquez and other Latin American novelists is in part a narrative strategy for grappling with a social reality so hallucinatory, so irrational that it defies ordinary naturalistic description." Through the 1980s and 1990s, García Márquez continued to strengthen his reputation as a literary master with publication of the novels Love in the Time of Cholera, based partially on the story of his parents' courtship; The General in His Labyrinth, a fictional account of the final months in the life of nineteenth-century South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar; and Of Love and Other Demons, inspired by the author's recollection of a tomb excavation he had witnessed in 1949, when a centuries-old skeleton of a young girl was discovered with living hair flowing from the skull. García Márquez used this image to create the character of Sierva Maria De Todos Los Angeles, a girl in touch with both the Spanish and the African legacies of her Caribbean heritage. When she is bitten by a mad dog, the area bishop orders an exorcism, but the priest charged with performing the rite falls in love with the girl.

As with many of García Márquez's earlier novels, Of Love and Other Demons was hailed for its symbolic commentary on Latin American history. As Times Literary Supplement contributor Michael Kerrigan observed, "To excavate the historic vault in which his people lie buried is, for García Márquez, an act not of desecration but of liberation." Since the summer of 1999, when he was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, García Márquez has lived in relative seclusion, focusing his attention on completing a planned three-volume memoir. He was quoted in a CNN.com report as hailing his diagnosis as an "enormous stroke of luck" that forced him to put aside less urgent projects. The first volume of the memoir will cover the author's family background and his early life. The second will focus on his writing career, and the third will examine his relationships with world leaders. Selected Writings COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel García Márquez (born 1928) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose works earned him the reputation of being the greatest living writer of Castilian in Spain and Latin America.

Born in Aracata, Magdalena, Gabriel García Márquez received his early education and baccalaureate degree from the Liceo Nacional of Zipaquirá in 1946. That year he started working as a newspaper editor for El Universal in Cartagena. In 1948 he moved to Barranquilla, where he was editor of El Heraldo until 1952. Then he became editor of the liberal newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá during repressive eras of the conservative dictators Laureano Gómez and his successor, General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Between 1955 and 1960 several short stories and a novella had begun to establish García Márquez's fame in the Spanish-speaking world. La hojarasca (1955), a short novel, is set, like his later works, in the mythical town of Macondo in the swampy coastal area of northeastern Colombia known as the Ciénaga. The story reflects the changes the 20th century wrought in the life of this sleepy country town. Much of García Márquez's work centers on funerals.

In La hojarasca mourners who knew the dead man in life contemplate the past, each from his own point of view. In three monologues these persons—an old colonel, his daughter Isabel, and Isabel's son—tell their story. The dead man, a doctor and former friend of the colonel, had committed suicide. The narrators do not entirely explain the motives of the suicide, but in the course of each story much of the past history of the village of Macondo is revealed. A strong premonition of imminent, relentless, and inevitable doom for Macondo permeates the novel. Macondo and the Buendía family were further developed in El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961; Nobody Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories). The next short stories, Los funerales de la Mama Grande (1962), strengthened the growing reputation of García Márquez. The publication of Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude) constituted something of a literary phenomenon when it sold over 100,000 copies in 15 editions in Buenos Aires in 1969.

The story of Cien años de soledad depicts the rise and fall of a village as seen in the lives of five generations of one family—an almost biblical pentateuch—ending appropriately with flood and drought, climaxed by cyclonic winds of final destruction, which comes as the last living Buendía deciphers the ancient prophecies of doom and learns that "races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth." The setting of this novel is a microcosm for Colombia, and through extension, both South America and the rest of the world. Pablo Neruda, the most famous Chilean poet, called Cien años de soledad, "the greatest revelation in the Spanish language since the Don Quixote of Cervantes." This novel is generally considered García Márquez's masterpiece. García Márquez considered his next novel, El otono del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch), "a perfect integration of journalism and literature." García Márquez continued to write novels, short stories, essays, and film scripts. In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.

In 1983, he wrote the film script Erendira adapted from his 1972 novella La increible y triste historia de la candida Erendira y su abuela desalmada (Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother). García Márquez's other famous novel, El amor en los tiempos del colera (Love in the Time of Cholera) was written in 1985 (with an English translation published in 1988). This novel is an exploration of the manifestations of love and the relationship between aging, death, and decay. After Cholera he published the novels Elgeneral en su laber into (1989; The General in His Labyrinth, 1990), Doce cuentos peregrinos (1992; Strange Pilgrims, 1993), and Love and Other Demons (1994). García Márquez's fictional blend of history, politics, social realism, and fantasy has given rise to the term "magical realism." The use of magical realism was often imitated by other Latin American authors, most notably, Isabel Allende.

His need to tell the story drives García Márquez's writing. In the July 1997 issue of Harper's, García Márquez writes, "the best story is not always the first one but rather the one that is told better." Because of his storytelling ability, García Márquez has assured himself a place in history as the greatest Latin American writer of the 20th century. Further Reading Critical interpretations of Gabriel García Márquez's work can be found in the series Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 2, 1974; Volume 3, 1975; Volume 8, 1978; Volume 10, 1979; Volume 15, 1980; Volume 27, 1984; Volume 47, 1988; and Volume 55, 1989.

Interviews with García Márquez appeared in PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association, March 1989; Variety, March 25-31, 1996; World Policy Journal, Summer 1996; and Booklist, March 15, 1997. □ Cite this article The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Gabriel García Márquez (gäbrēĕl´ gärsē´ä mär´kās), 1927–2014, Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Aracataca. Widely considered one of the great Latin American masters of narrative and one of the finest literary stylists of the 20th cent., García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. Drawing on his own history and that of his family, town, and nation and reflecting the influence of writers such as Jorges Luis Borges , Miguel Angel Asturias , and Alejo Carpentier , his fiction focuses on the physical and moral travail of coastal Colombia, which is given universal meaning in his books.

He began his literary career while a law student in Barranquilla, earning a sparse living writing for local newspapers while also publishing stories in local magazines. He left Colombia in the late 1950s and subsequently lived in many places, from 1961 on mainly in Mexico City. His two masterpieces One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, tr. 1970), his best-known work and the one that vaulted him to international fame, and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985, tr. 1988), present his central themes of violence, solitude, time, memory, and the overwhelming human need for love. García Márquez's style marks a high point in Latin American magic realism ; it is rich and lucid, mixing reality and fantasy. Among his 15 other works of fiction are Leaf Storm and Other Stories (1955, tr. 1972), No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories (1958, tr. 1968), Innocent Erendira and Other Stories (1972, tr.

1978), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975, tr. 1976), The General in His Labyrinth (1989, tr. 1990), Of Love and Other Demons (1994, tr. 1995), and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004, tr. 2005). His nonfiction work News of a Kidnapping (1996, tr. 1997) chronicles drug-related abductions in Colombia. Living to Tell the Tale (2002, tr. 2003) is the first volume of a projected three-volume autobiography that García Márquez did not complete. See P. A. Mendoza, The Fragrance of Guava: Conversations with Gabriel Garcia Márquez (1982); biography by G. Martin (2009); I. Stavans, Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years (2010); studies by G. R. McMurray, ed. (1987), B. McGuirle and R. A. Cardwell, ed.

(1987), J. Ortega, ed. (1988), K. McNerney (1989), M. Wood (1990), H. Oberhelman (1991), M. Bell (1993), R. Fiddian, ed. (1995), J. Mellen (2000), C. Kline (2002), H. Bloom, ed. (rev. ed. 2007), and P. Swanson, ed. (2010). Cite this article Spanish American literature | Article about Spanish American literature by The Free Dictionary Spanish American literature | Article about Spanish American literature by The Free Dictionary See also Spanish literature Spanish literature, the literature of Spain. Iberian Literature before Spanish Literature flourished on the Iberian Peninsula long before the evolution of the modern Spanish language. ..... Click the link for more information. ; Portuguese literature Portuguese literature, writings in Portuguese. The literature of Brazil is considered separately (see Brazilian literature). Early Works Literature in the Portuguese language first emerged in lyric poetry, the courtly love poems collected in cancioneiros ..... Click the link for more information.

; Brazilian literature Brazilian literature, the writings of both the European explorers of Brazil and its later inhabitants. The Colonial Period Upon the discovery of Brazil, the Portuguese began to describe the wonders of the new land. ..... Click the link for more information. . The Colonial Era The history of Spanish American literature begins with the writings of the explorers, soldiers, and missionaries who participated in the conquest of the New World. Their writings, eyewitness accounts of the discovery, the conquest, the existing civilizations, and the natural wonders of the flora and fauna, form the literature of the early colonial period. These chronicles, letters, histories, religious pieces, and epic poems are the vibrant and fascinating expression of those who fought for church, crown, and gold. The letters of Christopher Columbus Columbus, Christopher, Ital. Cristoforo Colombo , Span. Cristóbal Colón , 1451–1506, European explorer, b. Genoa, Italy. Early Years ..... Click the link for more information. to Ferdinand V and Isabella I and those of Hernán Cortés Cortés, Hernán, or Hernando Cortez , 1485–1547, Spanish conquistador, conqueror of Mexico.

Expedition to Mexico Cortés went (1504) first to Hispaniola and later (1511) accompanied Diego de Velázquez to Cuba. ..... Click the link for more information. , the conqueror of Mexico, to Charles V are among the classics of this period. Bernal Díaz del Castillo Díaz del Castillo, Bernal , c.1492–1581, Spanish conquistador and chronicler. He had served in the New World under various commanders—Pedro Arias de Ávila, Diego de Velázquez, Francisco Fernández de Córdoba, and ..... Click the link for more information. , one of the soldiers of Cortés, wrote a remarkable history of the conquest of Mexico, and the history by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas Las Casas, Bartolomé de , 1474–1566, Spanish missionary and historian, called the apostle of the Indies. He went to Hispaniola with his father in 1502, and eight years later he was ordained a priest. ..... Click the link for more information.

of the destruction of the Indies made him the "apostle of the Indians" and the author of the "black legend" of Spain. Early poetry includes Chile's epic poem, La Araucana (1569–89; tr. 1945) by Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de , 1533–94, Spanish poet. In Chile (1556–63) he fought against the Araucanian, and while there he began the epic poem La Araucana, considered the finest Spanish historical poem. ..... Click the link for more information. , a soldier who described the conflict between the Spaniards and the Araucanians Araucanians , South American people, occupying most of S central Chile at the time of the Spanish conquest (1540). The Araucanians were an agricultural people living in small settlements. ..... Click the link for more information. of Chile. The epic tradition was continued by Diego de Hajeda and Bernardo de Balbuena.

Among the first of those born in the New World to write about it, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Garcilaso de la Vega , 1539–1616, Peruvian historian; son of the Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega and an Incan princess and therefore called the Inca. He grew up in Peru during the turbulent post-Conquest period. ..... Click the link for more information. described the history of the Incas and of Peru. With the growth of Spanish colonial society in America came the concomitant growth of literary circles, especially in the viceregal capitals of Mexico City and Lima. The writings of the time were imitative of 17th-century Spanish literature. Several notable figures were Juan Ruiz de Alarcón Alarcón, Juan Ruiz de , 1581?–1639, Spanish dramatic poet, one of the great literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age, b. Mexico. After practicing law in Spain (1600–1608) and Mexico, he returned (1613) to Spain, where he obtained a minor government post. ..... Click the link for more information.

, the Mexican-born playwright, generally considered one of the great Spanish dramatists; Juana Inés de la Cruz Juana Inés de la Cruz , 1651–95, Mexican poet. She is considered the greatest lyric poet of the colonial period. A beautiful and intellectually precocious girl, Juana was a favorite at the viceregal court before entering a Mexican convent at the age of 16. ..... Click the link for more information. , Mexican nun, feminist, and intellectual, known for her lyric poetry, plays, and prose; and the Peruvian Juan del Valle y Caviedes, known for his satiric poetry and sharp wit. The Nineteenth Century: Nationalism and Romanticism The colonial period in Spanish American history and letters came to an end with the wars for independence in the early 19th cent. Prose writers and poets, imbued with the ideals of revolution and the nationalism of independence, expressed their thoughts in fiery prose and heroic verse. Simón Bolívar Bolívar, Simón , 1783–1830, South American revolutionary who led independence wars in the present nations of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. .....

Click the link for more information. , the Liberator, is known for his analyses of the political scene as well as for his military exploits. The Mexican José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi Fernández de Lizardi, José Joaquín , 1776–1827, Mexican journalist, novelist, and dramatist, known by his pseudonym El Pensador Mexicano. His early liberalism, revealed in satiric poetry, put him at odds with the censors. ..... Click the link for more information. became famous as an ardent propagandist and pamphleteer. Basically a journalist, he is remembered as the author of the first Spanish American novel, The Itching Parrot (1816; tr. 1942), a work in the picaresque genre. José Joaquín Olmedo Olmedo, José Joaquin , 1780–1847, Ecuadorian statesman and poet. An ambassador to Paris and London after Ecuador's independence, Olmedo gained renown for his ode La Victoria de Junín ..... Click the link for more information.

celebrated the victories of Bolívar in a heroic poem in the classical style entitled La victoria de Junín: Canto a Bolívar (1825). Andrés Bello Bello, Andrés , 1781–1865, South American intellectual leader, b. Venezuela. In 1810 he was sent with Bolívar on a mission to London, where he remained for 19 years as a diplomat, teacher, and writer. ..... Click the link for more information. , the Venezuelan humanist, educator, and poet, also sang of America in his serene A Georgic of the Tropics (1826; tr. 1954). With political independence from Spain achieved, except in the island countries of the Caribbean, cultural independence swept the region, aided by the romantic tenets of freedom, emotional intensity, and individualism. For a while, classic forms coexisted with romanticism romanticism, term loosely applied to literary and artistic movements of the late 18th and 19th cent.

Characteristics of Romanticism Resulting in part from the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution, the romantic movements had in common only a ..... Click the link for more information. as in the poetry of José María Heredia Heredia, José María , 1803–39, Cuban journalist and poet. He is considered the most lyrical of the poets writing during the period of the wars of independence. ..... Click the link for more information. of Cuba. His En el teocalli de Cholula [in the temple-pyramid of Cholula] (1820) is the first Spanish American romantic poem. Among the early romanticists were the young intellectuals who fled from the tyranny of Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina. Esteban Echeverría Echeverría, Esteban , 1805–51, Argentine romantic poet, prose writer, and revolutionary propagandist. After five years in Europe he introduced romanticism in Argentina in his poem Elvira (1832). ..... Click the link for more information. expressed himself in the poetic narrative La cautiva [the captive] (1827).

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino , 1811–88, Argentine statesman, educator, and author, president of the republic (1868–74). An opponent of Juan Manuel de Rosas, he spent years of exile in Chile, becoming known as a journalist and an educational reformer. ..... Click the link for more information. , also of Argentina, was not only the leading exponent of romanticism but also a prolific writer and educator. His Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants (1845; tr. 1960), a study of personalism in politics, is among the classics of Spanish American letters. The emphasis on the national scene, so characteristic of romanticism, gave rise to the gaucho literature of Argentina and Uruguay, an indigenous literary genre. The gaucho gaucho , cowboy of the Argentine and Uruguayan pampas (grasslands). The typical gaucho, a familiar figure in the 18th and 19th cent., was a daring, skillful horseman and plainsman. ..... Click the link for more information.

, long the hero of popular tales and ballads, became the subject of some of the most original verse of the century in the poetry of Rafael Obligado, Estanislao del Campo, and in the classic Martín Fierro (1872–79; tr. 1948) of José Hernández Hernández, José , 1834–86, Argentine poet, journalist, and soldier. Hernández lived in the pampas as a child. He was the author of the national classic of gaucho literature, Martín Fierro (1872), and its sequel, ..... Click the link for more information. . The romanticist's interest in the search for his native roots can be seen in the epic poem Tabaré (1886; tr. 1956) of Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, and in the historical anecdotes and sketches, the Knights of the Cape and 37 Other Selections from Tradiciones peruanas (1872–1910; tr.

1945), of Ricardo Palma Palma, Ricardo , 1833–1919, Peruvian scholar and author. Palma abandoned an active early career as a naval officer, journalist, and politician to achieve note as a historian with a book on the Inquisition in Lima (1863). ..... Click the link for more information. . Several novels of the period reflect the various trends in letters. Amalia (1851–55; tr. 1919), by José Mármol Mármol, José , 1817–71, Argentine writer of the romantic school. His invectives against Juan Manuel de Rosas earned him the nickname "the poetic hangman of Rosas. ..... Click the link for more information. , deals with life in Argentina under Juan Manuel de Rosas; Martín Rivas (1862; tr. 1918), by Alberto Blest Gana Blest Gana, Alberto , 1830–1920, Chilean novelist. He is considered the principal 19th-century Spanish American realist.

Although as a diplomat he spent much of his life abroad, his novels, both social and historical, depict Chilean scenes. ..... Click the link for more information. of Chile, depicts the life and customs of Chile; María (1867; tr. 1890) is the tragic idyll of Jorge Isaacs Isaacs, Jorge , 1837–95, Colombian novelist. The son of a prosperous Englishman and a creole, Isaacs witnessed the ruin and premature death of his parents and the despoilment of his estate by civil war. ..... Click the link for more information. of Colombia; and Cumandá (1871), by Ecuador's Juan León Mera, is a romantic portrayal of native life. This same period produced some of Spanish America's most notable essayists. Juan Montalvo Montalvo, Juan , 1832–89, Ecuadorean essayist and political writer. A champion of liberalism and a master of political invective, he showered fiery anathemas on the tyrant Gabriel García Moreno and later on the dictator Ignacio Veintimilla. ..... Click the link for more information.

of Ecuador wielded his pen against the tyranny of García Moreno; Eugenio María de Hostos Hostos, Eugenio María de , 1839–1903, Latin American philosopher, sociologist, writer, and political and educational reformer, b. Puerto Rico, educated in Spain. ..... Click the link for more information. of Puerto Rico championed the cause of the independence and union of the islands of the Antilles; and Manuel González Prada González Prada, Manuel , 1848–1918, Peruvian writer and political reformer, b. Lima. One of the most brilliant figures in Spanish American letters, he was a master of satire and invective. ..... Click the link for more information. of Peru attacked the entire social and economic system of his country and spoke out in defense of the indigenous peoples. Modernismo The writers of Spanish America in the last quarter of the 19th cent. broke with the nationalistic expression of the previous generation and immersed themselves in a world of artifice. These were the modernistas, who believed in "art for art's sake" and were influenced by the French Parnassian and symbolist schools.

They wrote on rare and exotic themes and experimented with language and meter. Those who initiated this literary movement, known as modernismo modernismo , movement in Spanish literature that had its beginning in Latin America. It was paramount in the last decade of the 19th cent. and the first decade of the 20th cent. Modernismo derived from French symbolism and the Parnassian school. ..... Click the link for more information. , were the Mexican Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera Gutiérrez Nájera, Manuel , 1859–95, Mexican poet and journalist. One of the precursors of modernismo, he founded the literary periodical Revista Azul. ..... Click the link for more information. , the Colombian José Asunción Silva Silva, José Asunción , 1865–96, Colombian poet, one of the precursors of modernismo. Silva's life was shadowed by the loss of a crucial manuscript, family debt, and the death of a beloved sister. ..... Click the link for more information. , and the Cubans Julián del Casal Casal, Julián del , 1863–93, Cuban poet, b.

Havana. A friend of Rubén Darío, Casal became a leader in modernismo. He was greatly influenced by the French Parnassians. ..... Click the link for more information. and José Martí Martí, José , 1853–95, Cuban essayist, poet, and patriot, leader of the Cuban struggle for independence. One of the greatest prose writers of Spanish America, he is noted for his fluent style and vivid imagery. ..... Click the link for more information. , the latter known also for his struggle to gain Cuba's independence from Spain. The movement reached its peak with the publication of the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío Darío, Rubén , 1867–1916, Nicaraguan poet, originally named Félix Rubén García Sarmiento. A child prodigy, he gained a thorough knowledge of Spanish and French cultures through reading; it was then widened during many years abroad in both ..... Click the link for more information. 's Selected Poems (tr. 1965), which influenced writers throughout Spanish America and many in Spain.

Among others there were Amado Nervo Nervo, Amado , 1870–1919, Mexican poet. Known as the "monk of poetry," he studied for the priesthood but abandoned it for writing. An intimate friend of Rubén Darío, he was a leading figure of modernismo. ..... Click the link for more information. of Mexico, José Santos Chocano Chocano, José Santos , 1875–1934, Peruvian poet and one of the leaders of modernismo. During a life of Latin-American wandering, Chocano was closely linked both to brutal dictatorships and idealist revolutionaries. ..... Click the link for more information. of Peru, Ricardo Jaimes Freyre of Bolivia, Guillermo Valencia Valencia, Guillermo , 1873–1943, Colombian poet, one of the leaders of modernismo. He came from an aristocratic family, received solid classical training, and became active politically as an orator. Valencia was a disciple of José Asunción Silva. ..... Click the link for more information.

of Colombia, Julio Herrera y Reissig Herrera y Reissig, Julio , 1875–1910, Uruguayan poet. He belonged to a family prominent in public affairs but withdrew along with his bohemian followers to an attic known as the Tower of the Panoramas. He became the Uruguayan leader of modernismo. ..... Click the link for more information. and José Enrique Rodó Rodó, José Enrique , 1872–1917, Uruguayan essayist, literary critic, and philosopher. Rodó spent most of his life in Montevideo, where he helped to found and edit La Revista Nacional de Literatura y Ciencias Sociales. ..... Click the link for more information. of Uruguay, and Leopoldo Lugones Lugones, Leopoldo , 1874–1938, Argentine poet and man of letters. First an anarchist, then a socialist, finally a fascist, Lugones was a friend of Rubén Darío and the outstanding modernista poet of Argentina. ..... Click the link for more information. of Argentina.

Early-Twentieth-Century Trends With the passing of modernismo, poetry was influenced by many trends and movements. Three women poets, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarbourou Ibarbourou, Juana de , 1895–1979, Uruguayan poet also called Juana de América. One of the most popular poets of Spanish America, she caused a sensation with the exuberant and lilting sensuality of her lyrics in Aguas de diamante (1919) and ..... Click the link for more information. , and the Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral Mistral, Gabriela , 1889–1957, Chilean poet whose original name was Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. She was a teacher in and director of rural schools in Chile before she attained wider acclaim as an educator. ..... Click the link for more information. , are known for their impassioned lyrics.

Among the poets of the avant-garde movements in poetry were Vicente Huidobro Huidobro, Vicente , 1893–1948, Chilean poet, founder of the aesthetic movement known as creacionismo, which emphasized the value of the poet as verbal magician, exploring the deepest sources of poetic creation. ..... Click the link for more information. of Chile, César Vallejo Vallejo, César , 1895–1938, Peruvian poet. Vallejo was one of the most influential yet least imitated figures of modern Spanish-American letters. He identified himself with the sufferings of the underprivileged and dedicated himself to the cause of social progress. ..... Click the link for more information. of Peru, Jorge Luis Borges Borges, Jorge Luis , 1899–1986, Argentine poet, critic, and short-story writer, b. Buenos Aires. Borges has been widely hailed as the foremost contemporary Spanish-American writer. ..... Click the link for more information. of Argentina, and Chile's Pablo Neruda Neruda, Pablo , 1904–73, Chilean poet, diplomat, and Communist leader.

He changed his original name, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, so that his railroad-worker father would not discover that he was a poet. ..... Click the link for more information. , also a Nobel laureate. The prose writers largely turned their attention to social themes. Following a tradition perfected by Martí, González Prada, and Rodó, the 20th-century essay reached new heights of intensity in the writings of José Vasconcelos Vasconcelos, José , 1882–1959, Mexican educator and writer. He headed (1920–24) the National Univ. of Mexico and, as minister of education under Álvaro Obregón, worked vigorously and with considerable success to establish schools, to persuade the ..... Click the link for more information. of Mexico, known for his cultural theory as well as his participation in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and in the educational reform of his country. The essay was cultivated in a more artistic and aesthetic form by the scholarly Alfonso Reyes Reyes, Alfonso , 1889–1959, Mexican writer, diplomat, and educator.

Reyes is generally recognized as one of the greatest Spanish American writers of his time. After spending several years in Europe, Argentina, and Brazil as a diplomat, he became president of the Colegio de ..... Click the link for more information. of Mexico and by Pedro Henríquez Ureña of the Dominican Republic. Later on Mariano Picón-Salas of Venezuela and Germán Arciniegas Arciniegas, Germán , 1900–1999, Colombian historian and diplomat. A leading Latin American intellectual, he gained prominence as a journalist and publisher. ..... Click the link for more information. of Colombia made the essay the vehicle of social, historical, and political ideas in Spanish America. Those who cultivated the novel and short story in the early 20th cent. also tended mainly toward social protest and probed the roots of injustice and oppression in humanity. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 produced a subgenre—generally first-hand accounts of aspects of the revolution. The classic work of this genre is The Underdogs (1915; tr. 1963) by Mariano Azuela Azuela, Mariano , 1873–1952, Mexican novelist.

Azuela began his medical practice in 1899, writing short stories and novels in his spare time. In 1915 he joined Francisco Villa's revolutionary forces as a surgeon. ..... Click the link for more information. . Other works of this type include The Eagle and the Serpent (1928, tr. 1930) by Martín Luis Guzmán Guzmán, Martín Luis , 1887–1977, Mexican novelist and journalist. Guzmán worked as a journalist during the Mexican revolution, in which he joined the forces of Pancho Villa. ..... Click the link for more information. , and El indio [the indian] (1935; tr. 1937) by Gregorio López y Fuentes. The indigenous people, the poor, the underdog of any sort now entered literature as an urgent social problem and not as an element of local color.

Representative of this indigenista literature are Raza de bronce [bronze race] (1919) by the Bolivian Alcides Arguedas Arguedas, Alcides , 1879–1946, Bolivian writer and diplomat. His essays and novels, which have social and moralizing tendencies, are a reaction against the romantic idealization of the Native American. ..... Click the link for more information. , El mundo es ancho y ajeno [broad and alien is the world] (1941) by the Peruvian Ciro Alegría Alegría, Ciro , 1909–67, Peruvian novelist. Imprisoned several times for his political activities, Alegría was exiled to Chile in 1934. He gained fame with his novel La serpiente de oro (1935, tr. The Golden Serpent, 1943). ..... Click the link for more information. , and Huasipungo (1934; tr.

1964) by the Ecuadorian Jorge Icaza Icaza, Jorge , 1906–78, Ecuadorian novelist. Icaza wrote in harsh, realistic terms against the exploitation of the Native American. His novel En las calles [in the streets] won him acclaim in 1935. ..... Click the link for more information. . The struggle between humanity and the forces of nature, whether on the plains, in the tropics, or in the cities, was a challenging subject for novels and short stories. The life of the gaucho on the Argentine pampas is depicted in the novel El inglés de los güesos [the Englishman with the bones] (1924) by Benito Lynch, and in Don Segundo Sombra (1926; tr. 1935) by Ricardo Güiraldes Güiraldes, Ricardo , 1886–1927, Argentine writer. He spent his boyhood on a ranch where he learned the ways of the gauchos, later traveling to Europe. In his novels and short stories he applied postmodernist techniques to Argentine regional themes. ..... Click the link for more information. .

Life on the Venezuelan plains is portrayed in Doña Bárbara (1929; tr. 1931) by Rómulo Gallegos Gallegos, Rómulo , 1884–1969, Venezuelan novelist and statesman. Gallegos lived in Spain in voluntary exile from the Venezuelan dictatorship from 1931 until 1935. He returned to his country and was appointed minister of education, being elected president in 1948. ..... Click the link for more information. . The tropics, replete with struggles of man against man as well as man against nature, are dramatically described in the short stories of the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga Quiroga, Horacio , 1878–1937, Uruguayan short-story writer. Quiroga is considered a master of the short story. His work was deeply influenced by Kipling, Poe, Chekhov, and Maupassant as well as by the modernismo movement. ..... Click the link for more information. and in the novel The Vortex (1924; tr.

1935), by Colombia's José Eustasio Rivera Rivera, José Eustasio , 1889–1928, Colombian novelist. Rivera served on the commission to fix the Venezuelan boundary deep in the rain forest of the Amazon basin. ..... Click the link for more information. . Urban society with its many social problems is the theme of the novels of Federico Gamboa of Mexico and Manuel Gálvez of Argentina and the short stories of Manuel Rojas of Chile. With the passage of time the novel and short story became more removed from the geographical and social problems of Spanish America and became more immersed in the universal currents of literature. There were the psychological novels of Chile's Eduardo Barrios Barrios, Eduardo , 1884–1963, Chilean novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. He was director of libraries and minister of education in Chile. As a writer he was interested in the inner workings of his characters, especially the unstable or abnormal, whom he analyzed ..... Click the link for more information. and Argentina's Ernesto Sábato Sábato, Ernesto , 1911–2011, Argentinean novelist and literary critic, b. Rojas.

He received his doctorate in physics (1937) and taught until removed for anti-Peronist activities in 1945. His novels, which include El túnel (1948; tr. ..... Click the link for more information. , the existential works of Argentina's Eduardo Mallea Mallea, Eduardo , 1903–82, Argentine novelist and essayist. Mallea is considered one of the outstanding Latin American literary figures. Existentialist thought, particularly the writings of Kierkegaard and Kafka, influenced his intense and sometimes anguished analysis of ..... Click the link for more information. , and the poetic novels of Mexico's Agustín Yáñez Yáñez, Agustín , 1904–80, Mexican novelist and critic. Yáñez's writings include works about Native American myths and the Spanish colonial era. His work includes the novels The Edge of the Storm (1947, tr. ..... Click the link for more information. . Late-Twentieth-Century Literature The state of Spanish American letters from the middle to the end of the 20th cent.

was extremely rich, especially in the novel and poetry. Both genres received great critical acclaim outside the Spanish-speaking world and were widely translated into English and many other languages. Guatemala's Nobel Prize–winning Miguel Angel Asturias Asturias, Miguel Ángel , 1899–1974, Guatemalan novelist, poet, and diplomat. Living in Paris in the 1920s, Asturias was influenced by Romain Rolland, Valéry, and the surrealists. ..... Click the link for more information. combined mythological and social themes in works such as The President (1946; tr. 1963) and The Bejeweled Boy (1961; tr. 1972). Cuba's Alejo Carpentier Carpentier, Alejo , 1904–80, Cuban novelist and musicologist. As a political exile in Paris between 1928 and 1939, Carpentier was strongly influenced by Antonin Artaud, Jacques Prévert, and the surrealists. ..... Click the link for more information.

captured the world of magic and superstition in The Lost Steps (1953; tr. 1956) and The Harp and the Shadow (1979; tr. 1990), and gave the name of magic realism magic realism, primarily Latin American literary movement that arose in the 1960s. The term has been attributed to the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, who first applied it to Latin-American fiction in 1949. ..... Click the link for more information. to the rich and influential blend of the ordinary and fantastic that characterized many Spanish American novels of the 1960s and later. Meanwhile, Mexico's Juan Rulfo Rulfo, Juan , 1918–86, Mexican writer. In his fiction he recreates the desolation of his native southern Jalisco and brings to life its simple people in a harsh and tragic manner. He wrote one book of short stories, The Burning Plain and Other Stories (1955; tr. ..... Click the link for more information. recreated a poetic world of reality and fantasy in Pedro Páramo (1955; tr. 1959).

The Argentine Jorge Luis Borges Borges, Jorge Luis , 1899–1986, Argentine poet, critic, and short-story writer, b. Buenos Aires. Borges has been widely hailed as the foremost contemporary Spanish-American writer. ..... Click the link for more information. ' philosophical allegories (including Ficciones [1944; tr. 1962]) brilliantly combined the real with the fantastic, and his younger compatriot Julio Cortázar Cortázar, Julio , 1914–84, Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, and short-story writer, b. Brussels. Moving permanently to France in 1951, Cortázar gradually gained recognition as one of the century's major experimental writers. ..... Click the link for more information. gained renown for Hopscotch (1963; tr. 1966), his masterpiece of experimental fiction. Carlos Fuentes Fuentes, Carlos , 1928–2012, Mexican writer, editor, and diplomat.

He was head of the department of cultural relations in Mexico's ministry of foreign affairs (1956–59) and Mexican ambassador to France (1975–77). ..... Click the link for more information. of Mexico is one of the most eminent modern novelists (The Death of Artemio Cruz [1962; tr. 1964, 1991]), along with Mario Vargas Llosa Vargas Llosa, Mario , 1936–, Peruvian novelist and politician, b. Arequipa. Although his works contain much external realism, emphasizing the ugly and grotesque, he also often explores the minds of his characters, overcoming barriers of time and space. ..... Click the link for more information. of Peru (The Green House [1966; tr. 1968]), and, most of all, the 1982 Nobel Prize–winner Gabriel García Márquez García Márquez, Gabriel , 1927–2014, Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Aracataca.

Widely considered one of the great Latin American masters of narrative and one of the finest literary stylists of the 20th cent. ..... Click the link for more information. of Colombia (A Hundred Years of Solitude [1967; tr. 1970]). Bibliography For anthologies in translation, see H. de Onís, ed., The Golden Land: An Anthology of Latin American Folklore in Literature (1961); W. K. Jones, ed., Spanish American Literature in Translation: A Selection of Poetry, Fiction and Drama Since 1888 (1963); A. Torres-Ríoseco, ed., Short Stories of Latin America (1963); A. Flores, ed., The Literature of Spanish America: A Critical Anthology (4 vol., 1966–69); H. Carpentier and J. Brof, ed., Doors and Mirrors: Fiction and Poetry from Spanish America, 1920–70 (1972); S. Castro-Klaren, S. Molloy, and B.

Sarlo, ed., Women's Writing in Latin America: An Anthology (1991). See also E. A. Imbert, Spanish-American Literature: A History (2 vol., 2d ed. 1963); K. Schwartz, A New History of Spanish American Fiction (1972); D. Gallagher, ed., Modern Latin American Literature (1973) M. Forster, ed., Tradition and Renewal: Essays on Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature and Culture (1975); L. Klein, ed., Latin American Literature in the 20th Century: A Guide (1986); D. W. Foster, ed., Handbook of Latin American Literature (1987); C. Sole, ed., Latin American Writers (1989). 1000+ images about 10th Unit 1 World Lit: Latin & Central America on Pinterest | Making dolls, Pablo neruda and The sun Forward The Youngest Doll (Latin American Women Writers) by Rosario Ferre: A gentle maiden aunt who has been victimized for years unexpectedly retaliates through her talent for making life-sized dolls filled with honey.

“The Youngest Doll,” based on a family anecdote, is a stunning literary expression of Rosario Ferrs feminist and social concerns. It is... See More

Question: Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-2014) and Chilean Pablo Neruda (1904-73) are famous South American?
Answer: Writers