Review Of "Historia Y Ficción En La Narrativa Hispanoamericana

Swarthmore College
Works
Spanish Faculty Works
Summer 1986
Review Of "Historia Y Ficción En La
Narrativa Hispanoamericana" By R. G.
Echevarría
John J. Hassett
Swarthmore College, jhasset1@swarthmore.edu
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Recommended Citation
John J. Hassett. (1986). "Review Of "Historia Y Ficción En La Narrativa Hispanoamericana" By R. G.
Echevarría". Hispanic Review. Volume 54, Issue 3. 358-359.
http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-spanish/36
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Review
Author(s): John J. Hassett
Review by: John J. Hassett
Source: Hispanic Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Summer, 1986), pp. 358-359
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/473213
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358
Reviews
HR, 54 (1986)
comparative allusions clutter the analysis and seem to belong in a different
type of study, such as a typology of narrative structures.
The section on style is unduly diffuse, tending to descriptive characterization rather than to the establishment of a critical argument about
Arlt's language. The discussion of Arlt's work in relation to the reader
gains more of a purpose and is as interesting as the section on narrative
arrangements, though quite brief. "La recepcion de Ia obra de Arlt" is
disappointingly conventional. Most of this section is a review of Arlt criticism, emphasizing the lack of structural studies and the need for the
current volume to correct shortcomings of the standing critical literature.
It would have been more productive to consider the many approaches critics
have taken to structural and semiotic questions in Arlt, including provocative commentary by Jitrik, Gaspar Pio del Corro, David Vifias, and
others. Here, the prevalence of structural discussion is understated. D. W.
Foster's work is oddly identified as thematic; there is confusion about newcritical readings like Aden Hayes', whose purpose is not to argue about
what Arlt intended but to account for features of his work through a
unifying textual explanation. A more generous and meditative survey of
Arltian criticism is still a topic awaiting duly imaginative treatment.
Gnutzmann's study is carefully executed, but sometimes purposelessly
descriptive and somewhat given to overvigorous symbolic explication.
Though cluttered and uneven, it is worthwhile to students of Arlt's work,
who will probably find its most significant contribution in the above-mentioned sections on structural analysis.
NAOMI LINDSTROM
University of Texas, Austin
Historia y ficcion en la narrativa hispanoamericana. Ed. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1984. 408 pages.
My feelings regarding this text are somewhat mixed. This reaction is
due more to the structure of the text and its misleading title than to the
quality of the essays that it contains.
The essays are the product of a colloquium held at Yale University in
March of 1979. As Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, the compiler of this volume, states in his prologue, the purpose of the colloquium was twofold: 1)
to examine the relationship between Spanish-American history and its
narrative from the colonial period up to the present time, and 2) to render
homage to one of Spanish America's most gifted men of letters, the late
Alejo Carpentier. The dual nature of this focus is ambitious and perhaps
therein lie both the strengths and weaknesses of the text itself.
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359
Reviews
According to Gonzalez Echevarria there are three essential statements
that can be made about Spanish-American fiction: 1) it often seeks its
origins and even creates them through the chronicles of the Conquest; 2)
beginning with the nineteenth century and due principally to the fact that
political independence had become a reality for most of Spanish America,
the fiction of the area became less an imaginative and fantastic response
to the period of Discovery and Conquest and more an instrument for criticizing current reality; and 3) since the period of vanguardism one observes
a rejection of the scientific posture of the nineteenth-century novel and
the use of narrative as an instrument of philosophy and mythmaking,
which allows the writer to examine the present on the same level as the
historical past.
Gonzalez Echevarria's comments are insightful, and if the content of
the essays that follow his prologue reflected or examined the validity of
these statements, then we would have confronted quite a different book.
The essays, however, tend to stand more by themselves than they do as
part of a greater whole or unifying theme. The text is divided into six
distinct sections: an Introduction, which includes a thought-provoking and
witty address by Carpentier; a series of articles dedicated exclusively to
the narrative of the colonial period; an examination of the fiction of the
nineteenth century as well as that of the regionalist novel; a fourth division
that treats the narrative of Alejo Carpentier followed by a section entitled
"La nueva novela hispanoamericana" and, finally, a group of essays whose
principal concern is the Cuban novel written after the Revolution.
In the case of a good number of these essays, the connection between
their content and the title of the text, Historia y ficci6n en la narrativa
hispanoamericana, is not always apparent. For the reader seeking a significant study of the relationship between history and fiction in SpanishAmerican narrative this, then, is unfortunately not the book. However,
the reader will find some perceptive and well written essays on the chronicles and their authors as well as on the fiction of Alejo Carpentier, Severo
Sarduy, Edmundo Desnoes, and Reinaldo Arenas.
JOHN J. HASSETT
Swarthmore College
La literatura hispanoamericana: Entre compromiso y experimento. By
Julio Rodriguez-Luis. Madrid: Fundamentos, 1984. 297 pages.
These essays on Spanish-American fiction are the product of a scholar
obviously well versed in Latin-American literature and criticism. Professor
Rodriguez-Luis discusses a broad range of literary topics, from Esteban
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