The Latin American Innovative Novel of the 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment

Abstract

In her paper, "The Latin American Innovative Novel of the 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment," Elizabeth Coonrod Martínez examines four early twentieth-century novels from four different Latin American countries. Coonrod Martínez pays particular attention to their innovation and rebellious breaking with tradition in the attempt to create new narrative. The paper includes comparisons of Arqueles Vela, Roberto Arlt, Martín Adán, and Pablo Palacio, and their novels of the 1920s, with works by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound. In the paper, Coonrod Martínez also compares these early novels to celebrated novels of the Latin American "Boom" in order to point out that the latter authors were influenced by territory gained by earlier generations which, however, were not celebrated internationally as the Boom authors were. Coonrod Martínez suggests that re-evaluations of these early texts and comparison of them to U.S. and European innovators during the same era will help demonstrate gains made by Latin American artists in the early twentieth century.