Beyond Individualism: Portraying Collective Selfhood in Latin American Literature and Art (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226843179)

A sweeping analysis of "archetypical realism" in Latin American literature and art.

Beyond Individualism examines the portrayal of collective identities over two centuries in Latin American literature and visual art. Lois Parkinson Zamora shows that many authors and artists are less concerned with singular selves than with selves-in-relation: less with individual autonomy than communal affiliation. Their works--sometimes labeled neobaroque, magical realism, surrealism, expressionism, and idealism--resist the kind of psychological realism typical of European and North American novels, moving instead toward a wholly new kind of fiction.

Zamora calls this new Latin American form "archetypal realism" because its characters represent entities larger than themselves. They sometimes embody entire communities, cultures, families, religious orders, or ideal planets. Through deft readings of collective characters in fiction by Gabriel García Márquez,

Author: Lois Parkinson Zamora
ISBN-10: 0226843173
ISBN-13: 9780226843179
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 11/19/2025
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover