Product Description
This study analyses ten works of narrative by Carlos Fuentes written over almost forty years, from 1958 to 1995. The four sections are both thematic and largely chronological. The first examines the critical realism of the early novels of the late fifties and early sixties. Engagement with Mexican national identity and history, and with the intellectual traditions of Mexican national thinking, European realism and Anglo-American modernism, is focused through the prism of family dramas. The second studies two highly experimental novels from the late sixties. The question of the Other is approached through the notion of tragedy, madness, the undoing of narrative conventions and securities. The third analyses two novels from the eighties where national identities are playfully evoked and largely dismantled through intertextual games, migrations of people and ideas. The final section looks at three works where collections of short stories or novellas combine loosely to form a novel. They move from the sharply focused violence with impunity in the Mexico City of Agua quemada, through the postmodern virgins of Constancia to the neo-realism of La frontera de cristal.
