A History of Mexican Literature

A History of Mexican Literature chronicles a story more than five hundred years in the making, looking at the development of literary culture in Mexico from its indigenous beginnings to the twenty-first century. Featuring a comprehensive introduction that charts the development of a complex canon, this History includes extensive essays that illuminate the cultural and political intricacies of Mexican literature. Organized thematically, these essays survey the multilayered verse and fiction of such diverse writers as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mariano Azuela, Xavier Villaurrutia, and Octavio Paz. Written by a host of leading scholars, this History also devotes special attention to the lasting significance of colonialism and multiculturalism in Mexican literature. This book is of pivotal importance to the development of Mexican writing and will serve as an invaluable reference for specialists and students alike.

1. The languages and literature of early print culture in the colonia Heather Allen; 2. A chronicon of crónicas: the new Spanish prose narrative Santa Arias; 3. Theatricality and public enactment of the Mexican colonial Patricia Ybarra; 4. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: the tenth muse and the difficult freedom to be Catherine Boyle; 5. Jesuit enlightenment: interventions in Christianity and intellectualism Ivonne del Valle; 6. Women in the print culture of new Spain Mariselle Meléndez; 7. The colonial literary scope: empire, letter, and power Anna More; 8. New Spain's archival past and present materiality Anna M. Nogar; 9. Early nineteenth-century nation-building prose Amy E. Wright; 10. The emergence of the Mexican literary field (1833–69) Victor Barrera Enderle; 11. The rise of cultural institutions Shelley Garrigan; 12. Liberal literati Juan Pablo Dabove; 13. The conservative paradigm José Ramón Ruisánchez Serra; 14. Mexican modernismo Adela Pineda Franco; 15. The Ateneo de la Juventud: the foundations of Mexican intellectual culture Pedro Ángel Palou; 16. Regimes of the avant-garde: colonialists, stridentists, proletarians, surrealists, contemporáneos, and independent rupture (1920–50) Yanna Hadatty Mora; 17. The institution of fiction: from Yáñez, Rulfo, and Fuentes to Pitol and Del Paso Ryan K. Long; 18. Octavio Paz: literature, modernity, institutions Maarten Van Delden; 19. Mexican poetry after the avant-garde Rogelio Guedea; 20. Nonfictions: essays, criticism, and crónica Beth Jörgensen; 21. Balancing acts: twentieth- and twenty-first-century Mexican theater Stuart A. Day; 22. Women writers in the land of 'virile' literature Nuala Finnegan; 23. The hidden histories of gender: LGBTQ writers and subjectivities in Mexico Michael K. Schuessler; 24. Mexican literature in the neoliberal era Ignacio M. Sänchez Prado; 25. The literatures of greater Mexico A. Gabriel Meléndez; 26. Indigenous literatures of Mexico Kelly McDonough and Gustavo Zapoteco Sideño; 27. Writing cinema: the communicating vessels of literature and film Niamh Thornton; 28. Popular narratives: telenovelas, corridos, historietas, and other literary pursuits Robert McKee and Maricruz Castro Ricalde.

Ignacio M. Sänchez Prado is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Washington University, Saint Louis. His research focuses on the relationship between aesthetics, ideology and cultural institutions in Mexico. He is the author of Screening Neoliberalism: Transforming Mexican Cinema, 1988–2012.
Anna M. Nogar is Associate Professor of Hispanic Southwest Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in colonial-era Mexican literature and culture. She is coeditor, with Oswaldo Estrada, of Colonial Itineraries of Contemporary Mexico: Literary and Cultural Inquiries.
José Ramón Ruisánchez Serra is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Houston. He has contributed to such journals as PMLA, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, and Revista de Literatura Mexicana.