A01=Lois Parkinson Zamora
allegory
archetype
Author_Lois Parkinson Zamora
Category=AB
Category=AGA
Category=DS
Category=JBSL
Category=NHK
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
identity
individualism
interartistic
Latin America
Neobaroque
New World Baroque
portraiture
Surrealism
Product details
- ISBN 9780226843179
- Weight: 1533g
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 26 Dec 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A sweeping analysis of “archetypal realism” in Latin American literature and art.
Beyond Individualism examines the portrayal of collective identities over two centuries in Latin American literature and visual art. Lois Parkinson Zamora shows that many authors and artists are less concerned with singular selves than with selves-in-relation: less with individual autonomy than with communal affiliation. Their works—sometimes situated under the labels Neobaroque, magical realism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and idealism—resist the kind of psychological realism typical of European and North American novels, moving instead toward a wholly new kind of fiction.
Zamora calls this new Latin American form “archetypal realism” because its characters represent entities larger than themselves. They may embody entire communities, cultures, families, religious orders, or ideal planets. Through deft readings of collective characters in fiction by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and more alongside the art of Diego Rivera, Remedios Varo, and Xul Solar, Zamora reveals a modernity based not on Enlightenment conceptions of selfhood but on community, collectivity, and kinship.
Beyond Individualism examines the portrayal of collective identities over two centuries in Latin American literature and visual art. Lois Parkinson Zamora shows that many authors and artists are less concerned with singular selves than with selves-in-relation: less with individual autonomy than with communal affiliation. Their works—sometimes situated under the labels Neobaroque, magical realism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and idealism—resist the kind of psychological realism typical of European and North American novels, moving instead toward a wholly new kind of fiction.
Zamora calls this new Latin American form “archetypal realism” because its characters represent entities larger than themselves. They may embody entire communities, cultures, families, religious orders, or ideal planets. Through deft readings of collective characters in fiction by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and more alongside the art of Diego Rivera, Remedios Varo, and Xul Solar, Zamora reveals a modernity based not on Enlightenment conceptions of selfhood but on community, collectivity, and kinship.
Lois Parkinson Zamora is the Moores Distinguished Professor of literature and art at the University of Houston. Her books include The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
