Following decolonisation, many newly independent nations throughout Latin America found themselves governed by caudillos, political and military strongmen who constructed distinctive authoritarian and personalist regimes. Carrying into the twentieth century, the traits of caudillismo underpinned several military dictatorships within the region. These dictatorial regimes also became a source of fascination for writers throughout Latin America who sought to use literature to examine and resist the manipulation and violence which sustained these leaders and their governments. Equally, writers who lived under, or were forced into exile by, military governments turned to literature to expose and challenge the wider power dynamics which infiltrate daily life under dictatorship. In this module, students will study, compare and contrast examples of ‘la novela del dictador’ (which focus primarily on the figure of the dictator himself) with others which focus on civilians, activists and militants who live under, and are persecuted by, these regimes. In each case, students will read and analyse a diverse range of literary texts, enhance their knowledge of dictatorial regimes in Latin America, and consider the ways in which writers experiment with form and content to re-assess Latin American history and reality. Given that military regimes in Latin American were quintessentially and unequivocally patriarchal, the module also incorporates and examines feminist and queer critiques of dictatorship.

The module aims to:

enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of twentieth century dictatorships through the study of contemporaneous literary texts;
	explore the ways in which writers respond to dictatorship and utilise literature to examine, expose, and challenge the power dynamics which underpin dictatorial regimes;
	analyse the gender politics which underpin dictatorial regimes and the ways in which feminist and queer writers confront these dynamics;
	cultivate skills and aptitudes of close (con)textual analysis in oral presentations and in written work.
Upon completion of the module, students will be able to:

demonstrate knowledge of several historical dictatorial regimes in Latin America;
	critically examine a range of literary texts, including complex and experimental works, which imaginatively examine dictators and the regimes they establish in 20th Century Latin America;
	demonstrate awareness of the wider power dynamics which underpin dictatorial regimes and the ways in which literature is used to expose and contest these forms of control;
	engage in close reading and critical analysis of primary and secondary sources (including materials written in academic and regional forms of Spanish) which address these themes.
Bibliography:Primary Texts:

SELECTION FROM:

Jorge Zalamea, El gran Burundún-Burundá ha muerto (1951)

Augusto Roa Bastos, Yo el supremo (1974)

Gabriel Garcia Márquez, El otoño del patriarca (1975)

Luisa Valenzuela, Cola de lagartija (1983)

Mario Vargas Llosa, La fiesta del chivo (2000)

Manuel Puig, El beso de la mujer araña (1976)
Isabel Allende, La casa de los espíritus (1982)
Marta Traba, Conversación al sur (1981)
Cristina Peri Rossi, La nave de los locos (1984)
Ricardo Piglia, Respiración artificial (1980)

Select Secondary Reading:

Avelar, Idelber, ‘La casa de los espíritus: la historia del mito y el mito de la historia’, Revista Chilena de Literatura 43 (1993), pp.67-74.

Balderston, Daniel, ‘El significado latente en Respiración artificial de Ricardo Piglia y en El corazon de junio de Luis Gusman’, in Daniel Balderston, et al. (eds.), Ficción y política: la narrativa argentina durante el proceso militar (Buenos Aires; Minneapolis: Alianza; Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature University of Minnesota, 1987), pp.109-21.

Bost, David H., 'Telling Tales in Manuel Puig's "El beso de la mujer araña"', South Atlantic Review, 54:2 (1989), pp.93-106.

Cruz, Felicia, ‘Ruminative Readings of Tapestry and Text: On Cristina Peri Rossi's La nave de los locos’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 11:1 (2005), pp.41-58

Dejbord, Parizad Tamara, Cristina Peri Rossi: escritora del exilio (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998)

Dejbord, Parizad, ‘Casas, casas y más casas: arquitectura de la represión en tres novelas de Marta Traba’, Chasqui, 29:2 (2000), pp.14-23

Geraghty, Niall HD, The Polyphonic Machine: Capitalism, Political Violence, and Resistance in Contemporary Argentine Literature (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)

Gómez, Jaime P., ‘La representación de la dictadura en la narrativa de Marta Traba, Isabel Allende, Diamela Eltit y Luisa Valenzuela’, Confluencia, 12:2 (1997), pp.89-99

Gómez-Lara, Ruben L., Intertextualidad generativa en El beso de la mujer araña de Manuel Puig (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1996).

Iglesias, Calviño, La novela del dictador en Hispanoamerica (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica, 1985) Kantaris, Elia Geoffrey, The Subversive Psyche: Contemporary Women's Narrative from Argentina and Uruguay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

Levinson, Brett, ‘Trans(re)lations: Dictatorship, Disaster and the "Literary Politics" of Piglia's Respiración artificial', Latin American Literary Review, 25:49 (1997), pp.91-120.

Maier, Linda S. and Dulfano, Isabel (eds.), Woman as Witness: Essays on Testimonial literature by Latin American Women (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004)

Polit-Dueñas, Gabriela, ‘Same Old Story: On Women, "Caudillos", and Literature in La fiesta del chivo', Letras Femeninas, 33:2 (2007), pp.99-119.

Rama, Angel, Los dictadores latinoamericanos (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1976)

Sandoval, Adriana, Los dictadores y la dictadura en la novela hispanoamericana, (1851-1978) (Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 1989)

Tomlinson, Emily (1998), ‘Rewriting Fictions of Power: The Texts of Luisa Valenzuela and Marta Traba’, The Modern Language Review, 93:3, pp.695-709

Wehr, Christian, ‘Mesianismo negativo y novela del dictador: Esteban Echeverria, Miguel Ángel Asturias y Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ Romanische Studien 1:4 (2016), pp.205-224

Zuluaga, Conrado, Novelas del dictador, dictadores de novela (Bogotá: C. Valencia Editores, 1977)