Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest - Paperback

by Lois Parkinson Zamora (Editor)

Baroque New Worlds traces the changing nature of Baroque representation in Europe and the Americas across four centuries, from its seventeenth-century origins as a Catholic and monarchical aesthetic and ideology to its contemporary function as a postcolonial ideology aimed at disrupting entrenched power structures and perceptual categories. Baroque forms are exuberant, ample, dynamic, and porous, and in the regions colonized by Catholic Europe, the Baroque was itself eventually colonized. In the New World, its transplants immediately began to reflect the cultural perspectives and iconographies of the indigenous and African artisans who built and decorated Catholic structures, and Europe's own cultural products were radically altered in turn. Today, under the rubric of the Neobaroque, this transculturated Baroque continues to impel artistic expression in literature, the visual arts, architecture, and popular entertainment worldwide.

Since Neobaroque reconstitutions necessarily reference the European Baroque, this volume begins with the reevaluation of the Baroque that evolved in Europe during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. Foundational essays by Friedrich Nietzsche, Heinrich Wölfflin, Walter Benjamin, Eugenio d'Ors, René Wellek, and Mario Praz recuperate and redefine the historical Baroque. Their essays lay the groundwork for the revisionist Latin American essays, many of which have not been translated into English until now. Authors including Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Édouard Glissant, Haroldo de Campos, and Carlos Fuentes understand the New World Baroque and Neobaroque as decolonizing strategies in Latin America and other postcolonial contexts. This collection moves between art history and literary criticism to provide a rich interdisciplinary discussion of the transcultural forms and functions of the Baroque.

Contributors. Dorothy Z. Baker, Walter Benjamin, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, José Pascual Buxó, Leo Cabranes-Grant, Haroldo de Campos, Alejo Carpentier, Irlemar Chiampi, William Childers, Gonzalo Celorio, Eugenio d'Ors, Jorge Ruedas de la Serna, Carlos Fuentes, Édouard Glissant, Roberto González Echevarría, Ángel Guido, Monika Kaup, José Lezama Lima, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mario Praz, Timothy J. Reiss, Alfonso Reyes, Severo Sarduy, Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Maarten van Delden, René Wellek, Christopher Winks, Heinrich Wölfflin, Lois Parkinson Zamora

Back Jacket

Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest" is an important and often captivating anthology that brings together key thinkers and formative writings on the aesthetic, political, and cultural dimensions of the Baroque. Embracing a transhistorical approach, Lois Parkinson Zamora and Monika Kaup develop a rich understanding of the labyrinthine and slippery nature of the Baroque--from its European origins, to its adaptation within a New World context, to its Neobaroque metamorphosis in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This is a meticulously edited work that promises to become a key text on the Baroque and Latin American culture."-- Angela Ndalianis, author of" Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment"

Author Biography

Lois Parkinson Zamora is John and Rebecca Moores Distinguished Professor in the Departments of English, History, and Art at the University of Houston.

Monika Kaup is Associate Professor of English and Adjunct Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, Seattle.