Chapter 4 - Joyce and Latin American Literature Minor Transnationalism and Modernist Form

Summary

From the 1920s onward, James Joyce and Latin American literature have been inextricably connected. Anglo-American criticism has traditionally seen this connection as a case of influence radiating from an iconic figure of European Modernism to the periphery. However, a close analysis of how prominent writers from Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar to Gustavo Sainz and Ricardo Piglia received and engaged with Joyce’s work reveals a less centralizing literary map. In their critical and creative writings, Joyce appears not as a model to be emulated but as an irreverent Irish writer that occupied an eccentric position within the Western literary tradition. Responding to changing political and social landscapes and diverse national contexts, these Latin American authors have marshalled and refashioned Joyce’s eccentricity to express their local conditions and cultural specificity in a cosmopolitan literary style.