I, The Supreme
''I the Supreme'' (orig. Spanish ''Yo el Supremo'') is a historical novel written by exiled Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos. It is a fictionalized account of the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who was also known as "Dr. Francia." The book's title derives from the fact that Francia referred to himself as "El Supremo" or "the Supreme." The first in a long line of dictators, the Supreme was a severe, calculating despot. The central themes of the novel are power and language and the relation between the two. The Supreme believes himself to be above all power and history: "I don't write history. I make it. I can remake it as I please, adjusting, stressing, enriching its meaning and truth." Yet this assertion is constantly challenged by the very fact that while he achieves power by means of writing and dictating, these very same methods can be used by others to dispute his authority. Not even his own identity, represented by the perso ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Helen Lane
Helen Lane (1921 – August 29, 2004) was an American translator of Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian language literary works into English. She translated works by numerous important authors including Jorge Amado, Augusto Roa Bastos, Marguerite Duras, Juan Goytisolo, Mario Vargas Llosa, Curzio Malaparte, Juan Carlos Onetti, Octavio Paz, Nélida Piñon, and Luisa Valenzuela. She was a recipient of the National Book Award. Career Lane began her career in the 1940s as a government translator in Los Angeles, before moving to New York City to work for publishers there. She became a freelance translator in 1970, and moved to the Dordogne in France. In addition to her books, she also provided subtitles for films by Jean-Luc Godard and Haskell Wexler. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1975 for her translation of ''Count Julian'' by Juan Goytisolo and in 1985 for her translation of '' The War at the End of the World'' by Mario Vargas Llosa. Life She was born Helen Ruth Over ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Francisco Solano López (politician)
Francisco Solano López Carrillo (24 July 1827 – 1 March 1870) was President of Paraguay from 1862 until his death in 1870. He was the eldest son of Juana Pabla Carrillo and of President Carlos Antonio López, Francisco's predecessor. At a very young age he served in the Paraguayan Army fighting against Juan Manuel de Rosas in the sporadic hostilities sustained by Paraguay and Argentina during the Platine Wars. After the downfall of Rosas, he became Ambassador of Paraguay, as Minister Plenipotentiary, in several European countries from 1853 to 1855. At his return in Asunción, he was appointed Vice-President of the Supreme Government of his father Carlos, and then assumed the presidency when his father died. He is one of the most controversial figures in South American history, particularly because of the Paraguayan War, known in the Plate Basin as "Guerra de la Triple Alianza". From one perspective, his ambitions were the main reason for the outbreak of the war whi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Latin American Literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the international success of the style known as magical realism. As such, the region's literature is often associated solely with this style, with the 20th century literary movement known as Latin American Boom, and with its most famous exponent, Gabriel García Márquez. Latin American literature has a rich and complex tradition of literary production that dates back many centuries. History Pre-Columbian literature Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, though the Aztecs and Mayans, for instance, produced elaborate codices. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the Popol Vuh. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Literary Genre
A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length (especially for fiction). They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even the rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable. Genres can all be in the form of prose or poetry. Additionally, a genre such as satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of the above, not only as a subgenre (see below), but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural movement of the historical period in which they were composed. History of genres Aristotle The concept of genre began in the works of Aristotle, who applied biological concepts to the classification of literary genres, or, as he called them, "species" (eidē). These classifications are mainl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Juan Manuel De Rosas
Juan Manuel José Domingo Ortiz de Rosas (30 March 1793 – 14 March 1877), nicknamed "Restorer of the Laws", was an Argentine politician and army officer who ruled Buenos Aires Province and briefly the Argentine Confederation. Although born into a wealthy family, Rosas independently amassed a personal fortune, acquiring large tracts of land in the process. Rosas enlisted his workers in a private militia, as was common for rural proprietors, and took part in the disputes that led to numerous civil wars in his country. Victorious in warfare, personally influential, and with vast landholdings and a loyal private army, Rosas became a caudillo, as provincial warlords in the region were known. He eventually reached the rank of brigadier general, the highest in the Argentine Army, and became the undisputed leader of the Federalist Party. In December 1829, Rosas became governor of the province of Buenos Aires and established a dictatorship backed by state terrorism. In 1831, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Juan Facundo Quiroga
Juan Facundo Quiroga (November 27, 1788 – February 16, 1835) was an Argentine caudillo (military strongman) who supported federalism at the time when the country was still in formation. Early years Quiroga was born in San Antonio, La Rioja, the son of a traditional but impoverished Riojan family of cattle breeders. He was sent at a young age to San Juan to be educated. Early in his life, he became a problem child, and escaped from school. During his wandering in the desert between San Juan and La Rioja, he purportedly encountered and killed a cougar, earning him the nickname ''El Tigre de los Llanos'' ("the Tiger of the Plains", after the ''Llanos'', the region of his birth). After the May Revolution proclaimed the self-rule of the country, Quiroga tried to enter the independentist army. He travelled to San Luis to enter the ''Granaderos a Caballo'' Regiment, led by General José de San Martín. He was imprisoned and eventually expelled due to his bad temper. He moved b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Facundo
''Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism'' (original Spanish title: ''Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie'') is a book written in 1845 by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a writer and journalist who became the second president of Argentina. It is a cornerstone of Latin American literature: a work of creative non-fiction that helped to define the parameters for thinking about the region's development, modernization, power, and culture. Subtitled ''Civilization and Barbarism'', ''Facundo'' contrasts civilization and barbarism as seen in early 19th-century Argentina. Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría calls the work "the most important book written by a Latin American in any discipline or genre". ''Facundo'' describes the life of Juan Facundo Quiroga, a ''caudillo'' who had terrorized provincial Argentina in the 1820s and 1830s. Kathleen Ross, one of ''Facundos English translators, points out that the author also published ''Facundo'' to "denounce the tyranny of the Argentine dict ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Domingo Sarmiento
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (; born Domingo Faustino Fidel Valentín Sarmiento y Albarracín; 15 February 1811 – 11 September 1888) was an Argentine activist, intellectual, writer, statesman and the second President of Argentina. His writing spanned a wide range of genres and topics, from journalism to autobiography, to political philosophy and history. He was a member of a group of intellectuals, known as the '' Generation of 1837'', who had a great influence on 19th-century Argentina. He was particularly concerned with educational issues and was also an important influence on the region's literature. Sarmiento grew up in a poor but politically active family that paved the way for many of his future accomplishments. Between 1843 and 1850, he was frequently in exile, and wrote in both Chile and in Argentina. His greatest literary achievement was ''Facundo'', a critique of Juan Manuel de Rosas, that Sarmiento wrote while working for the newspaper ''El Progreso'' during his exile ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Political Philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of laws by authority: what they are, if they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect, what form it should take, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever. Political theory also engages questions of a broader scope, tackling the political nature of phenomena and categories such as identity, culture, sexuality, race, wealth, human-nonhuman relations, ethics, religion, and more. Political science, the scientific study of politics, is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural (''sciences politiques'' and ''cienci ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mythmaking
Mythopoeia ( grc, , , myth-making), or mythopoesis, is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose fiction, prose, poetry, or other literary forms. This meaning of the word follows its use by #Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mytheme, mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of creating a mythology. Genre The term ''mythopoeia'' comes from Koine Greek, Hellenistic Greek (), meaning 'myth-making'; an alternative is ''mythopoesis'' () of similar meaning. The definition of ''mythopoeia'' as "a creating of myth" is first recorded from 1846. In early use, it meant the making of myths in ancient times. It was adopted by #Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien as the title of Mythopoeia (poem), one of his poems, written in 1931 and published in ''Tree and Leaf''. While many literary works carry mythic Theme (literature), ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Julio Cortázar
Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an entire generation of Spanish-speaking readers and writers in America and Europe. He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity. He lived his childhood and adolescence and incipient maturity in Argentina and, after the 1950s, in Europe. He lived in Italy, Spain, and in Switzerland. In 1951, he settled in France for more than three decades and composed some of his works there. Early life Julio Cortázar was born on 26 August 1914, in Ixelles,Cortázar sin barba, by ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |