Transatlantic Translations Essays on Latin American Literature Julio Ortega

Conceived of as the ‘New World’, Latin America represented a new beginning for its discoverers, yet in fact the colonials were only continuing their search for what they knew all along they wanted to find: fertile land with an abundance of spices, precious metals and labour. This interpretation of America's invention has long been a preoccupation of Latin American intellectuals and historians, leading to the most dominant post-colonial interpretation of the native as a marginalized figure often unusually wise or heroic according to his circumstances.

Ortega examines the ways in which the unknown has always been placed according to what is already known, the new according to the old. Tracing Latin American representations from the early modern to contemporary periods, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, Juan Rulfo, Ricardo Palma, Gabriel García Márquez, Juan María Gutiérrez and many others, Ortega uncovers the rich fabric of literature that has emerged from that culture, arguing that the learning of language, far from being a means for the colonial to indoctrinate and civilize the natives, gave the natives the means to describe and communicate with the natural world around them, and eventually to re-tell their own history.

Transatlantic Translations refigures Latin American narratives outside of the standard post-colonial framework of victimization and resistance. This book bridges the divide between abundance and scarcity, enabling the Old World and the New to meet and speak together in a shared language.