Temptation of the Word. The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa. - Softcover

Efrain Kristal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826513441 ISBN 13: 9780826513441

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Choice Outstanding Academic Book 1998

Temptation of the Word offers an ambitious and careful reading of the creative process--the origin of themes and the development of literary techniques--that Mario Vargas Llosa has brought to each of his novels, published through 1996. To understand the novelist's intellectual environment, Efrain Kristal analyzes the entire corpus of Vargas Llosa's writings, his literary influences in several languages, his intellectual biography, and his political activism, all in the light of the evolving political turbulence of his times and his own changing concept of literature.

About this title

Review

Forthright comparative criticism without the tics of jargon or pretentious literary philosophy, this is an excellent and eminently readable vade mecum for a world-class author. For anglophone readers, it is unquestionably the place to start in the pleasurable unraveling of the mysteries of Vargas Llosa's fiction.
--Choice Outstanding Academic Book 1998

Temptation of the Word manages to do what much extant criticism of this author has attempted and failed at: to give a virtually totalizing view of Vargas Llosa's work without reducing it to one single theme, or siding with one political position. This constitutes a new and original treatment of the subject and represents comparative literature at its traditional best.
--Enrico Mario Santi, Georgetown University

From the Back Cover

Temptation of the Word is an ambitious and careful reading of the creative process -- the origin of themes and the development of literary techniques -- that Mario Vargas Llosa has brought to each of his novels that have been published through 1997. To understand the novelist's intellectual environment, Kristal analyzes the entire corpus of Vargas Llosa's writings (including his many books of essays and his plays), his literary influences in several languages, his intellectual biography, and his polemical activism in contentious times, all in the light of the evolution of his political views and his concept of literature.

Kristal's analysis of each of the novels sheds light on how literary techniques, themes, and character types appear, recur, and are transformed over the four decades Vargas Llosa has been active as a writer of narrative fiction. In turn, Kristal's close readings are enriched by other sections of the book that offer insights into the intellectual currents and the political ideas that are addressed in Vargas Llosa's novels. This method brings to bear the most pertinent contextual debates, such as a discussion of the way his works borrow from, and sometimes rewrite, masterpieces by Conrad, Faulkner, Flaubert, Malraux, Stendahl, and Tolstoy, as well as exemplary works in the Latin American narrative tradition.

While the political content of Vargas Llosa's novels has novels betrayed his convictions, he has successfully avoided the temptation-fatal, according to Flaubert -- of reproducing rather than recreating reality. Kristal concludes that the central concern of Vargas Llosa's novels is a premise that the hopes and desires of individuals are always greater than theirability to fulfill them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0826513441
• ISBN 13: 9780826513441
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 276