El Boom y la literatura contemporánea: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
38 flashcard terms for AP Spanish Literature Unit 4, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 20-question quiz — free, no account needed.
1960s-70s international explosion of Latin American fiction: García Márquez, Cortázar, Fuentes, Vargas Llosa; formal experimentation and global readership.
Realismo mágico
Narrative mode in which fantastic events are told with the same matter-of-fact tone as ordinary ones, as in García Márquez.
Gabriel García Márquez
Colombian Nobel laureate (1927-2014); "El ahogado más hermoso del mundo" and "La siesta del martes" are required.
El ahogado más hermoso del mundo
A drowned giant washes ashore; the villagers name him Esteban and, transformed by his beauty, decide to make their village worthy of him.
Esteban
Name the women give the drowned man; his imagined life turns him into a communal myth that reshapes the village's identity.
La siesta del martes
A poor mother and daughter arrive in a hot town to visit the grave of her son, shot as a thief; her dignity confronts the priest and the staring town.
Dignidad materna
In "La siesta del martes" the mother's composure and "Yo soy su madre" assert human worth against social judgment.
Julio Cortázar
Argentine writer (1914-1984); "La noche boca arriba" and "Continuidad de los parques" blur reality and fiction.
La noche boca arriba
A motorcyclist in hospital dreams he is a Moteca fleeing Aztecs; the ending reverses which world is the dream.
Continuidad de los parques
A man reads a novel in which the lover comes to kill... the man reading a novel; fiction invades reality in a loop.
Lo fantástico
Genre in which an inexplicable event breaks the rules of the everyday world, causing hesitation (Todorov); Cortázar and Borges.
Jorge Luis Borges
Argentine writer (1899-1986); "El Sur" and "Borges y yo" explore doubles, labyrinths, and the blurring of reality and fiction.
El Sur
Juan Dahlmann, after a head injury and hospital, travels south and dies (or dreams he dies) in a knife fight he chooses as a heroic destiny.
Borges y yo
Short prose piece splitting the private man from the public writer 'Borges'; "No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página."
Filiberto buys a statue of the rain god that comes to life, floods his house and takes over; told through his diary found after his drowning.
Isabel Allende
Chilean novelist (b. 1942); "Dos palabras" (Cuentos de Eva Luna) celebrates the power of language through Belisa Crepusculario.
Dos palabras
Belisa sells words; she gives a Colonel a speech and two secret words that make him fall in love; language as transformative power.
Rosario Ferré
Puerto Rican writer (1938-2016); "La muñeca menor" mixes fantasy and feminist critique of class and marriage.
La muñeca menor
An aunt bitten by a river prawn makes life-size dolls for nieces; the youngest niece's doll, and later the niece herself, exacts revenge on the exploitative doctor.
Sabine Ulibarrí
New Mexican writer (1919-2003); "Mi caballo mago" narrates a boy's pursuit of a wild white horse and his coming of age.
Mi caballo mago
The narrator captures the legendary horse only to see it escape; he learns that freedom cannot be owned.
Tomás Rivera
Chicano writer (1935-1984); "...y no se lo tragó la tierra" shows a migrant boy cursing God and finding the earth does not swallow him.
...y no se lo tragó la tierra
Anger at family suffering leads the boy to curse God; nothing happens, and he feels a new sense of freedom and self.
Literatura chicana
Mexican-American writing about migrant labor, identity between cultures, and bilingualism (Rivera, Ulibarrí, Cisneros).
Ana María Matute
Spanish writer (1925-2014); "Pecado de omisión" shows an orphan, Lope, brutalized by his rich cousin's neglect.
Pecado de omisión
Emeterio sends Lope to be a shepherd instead of school; years later, seeing a schooled friend, Lope kills Emeterio with a stone.
Osvaldo Dragún
Argentine playwright (1929-1999); El hombre que se convirtió en perro (1957) is a Brechtian short play about dehumanizing labor.
El hombre que se convirtió en perro
Unable to find work, a man accepts a job as a factory watchdog and gradually becomes a dog; social critique through absurd theater.
Nancy Morejón
Cuban poet (b. 1944); "Mujer negra" narrates Afro-Cuban history from slavery to revolution in a collective female voice.
Mujer negra
The speaker crosses the Atlantic, works, rebels, and finally 'descends' from the Sierra with the Revolution; "Ahora soy."
Post-Boom
Later generation (Allende, Ferré, Skármeta) with more accessible narration, feminine and popular voices.
Narrador no fiable
A narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted, as in Chac Mool's diary or Dahlmann's possibly dreamed journey.