Terranostra 2

Terra nostra

Fuentes,Terra Nostra, and the Reconfiguration of Latin American Culture

"Widely acknowledged as Carlos Fuentes's most ambitious novel, Terra Nostra is a paradigm-shifting work that has generated a virtual cottage industry of scholarly analysis. Michael Abeyta has now taken a new approach to this celebrated novel by considering how giving a gift is like telling a story." "Grounding his study on the work of Derrida and Bataille, Abeyta focuses on the theme of the gift in Terra Nostra, analyzing how gift giving, excess, expenditure, sacrifice, and exchange give shape to the novel. The question of giving leads him into contemplation of such parallel issues as money and exchange economies, the gift's role in art and narration, and the Baroque in Latin American culture - an elaborate set of arguments that puts Fuentes's understanding of Latin American culture in a surprising new light." "Abeyta's study opens new windows on this difficult work as he grapples intelligently with the sometimes dizzying conceptual dances that Fuentes performs. He shows how Fuentes's rereading of Latin American history confronted important changes during the initial encounter between Europe and the Americas, which coincided with the spread of the European market and the shift from a gift to an exchange economy - from a culture in which economic relations were based on sacrifices, tributes, or gifts to one in which market forces predominated. He also engages in the recent scholarly debate on the potlatch and its implications in New World culture." "As Abeyta reveals, underlying Fuentes's treatment of the gift is a deep questioning of utopian thought and its impact throughout Latin America's history. His insights help define Terra Nostra's place in current discussions in literary theory about art, economy, and the question of the gift, and this work stand to be hailed as one of the most perceptive readings of the novel yet to appear."--BOOK JACKET.

Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra and the Kabbalah

Rather than treating the Jewish Kabbalah as merely one heretical doctrine among others in Fuente's novel Tera nostra, Penn (Spanish, U. of Leicester) argues that examining its presence is vital for understanding both the theme and style. He draws on 20th-century scholarship showing links between Jewish mysticism and theories of history and textuality, and literary implementations of the Kabbalah by writers who significantly influenced Fuentes such as Alego Carpentier and Jorge Luis Borges. His discusses the Kabbalistic concept of language and its operation in the novel, Celestina as metaphysical woman, Kabbalistic time, and a novelistic historiography. The text is double spaced. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).