The Colonial and the Postcolonial Marvelous

A celebration and critique of the marvelous--as the strange, wondrous, magical, or unreal--as it has been wielded in Spanish American and related literatures (French Caribbean, Brazilian). We follow the marvelous from European exoticizing of the New World during the colonial period to its postcolonial incarnations in "magical realism" and beyond. We attend particularly to the political, ideological, social, and commercial implications of the marvelous in writers including Carpentier, Chamoiseau, Columbus, Esquivel, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and García Márquez. Readings in English, though you may read texts in the original French, Spanish, or Portuguese.