Description

Severo Sarduy was among the most important figures in twentieth-century Latin American fiction and a major representative of the literary tendency to which he gave the name Neobaroque. While most of Sarduy s literary work is available in English, his theoretical writings have largely remained untranslated. This volume-presenting Sarduy s central theoretical contribution, Barroco (1974), alongside other related works-remedies that oversight. Barroco marks a watershed in postwar thought on the Baroque, both in French post-structuralism and in the Latin American context. Sarduy traces a double history, reading events in the history of science alongside developments in the history of art, architecture, and literature. What emerges is a theory of the Baroque as decentering and displacement, as supplement and excess, a theory capacious enough to account for the old European Baroque as well as its queer, Latin American and global futures. In addition to Barroco, this volume includes texts spanning Sarduy s career, from 1960s essays published originally in Tel Quel to late works from the 1980s and 90s. It thus offers a complete picture of Sarduy s thinking on the Baroque.