The Epic of America: An Introduction to Rafael Landívar and the Rusticatio Mexicana - Hardcover

Laird, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715632817 ISBN 13: 9780715632819

Publisher: Bloomsbury 3PL, 2006

Synopsis

A lively introduction to the rich and complex tradition of Latin literature from colonial Spanish America, and to its best known author, the poet Rafael Landivar. Rafael Landivar is the best known of all the poets from the Americas to write in Latin. In the 15 books of his Rusticatio Mexicana (1782), he described - in vivid epic verse - the lakes, volcanoes, and wildlife of Mexico and his native Guatemala, as well as the livelihoods and recreations of the people of the region. This panorama of nature, culture and production in colonial New Spain took classical didactic poetry into a new world of political conflict. But Landivar also writes with a strongly personal voice: elegiac and pastoral modes convey the pathos of displacement and the poet's overwhelming nostalgia for his American homeland. Andrew Laird's introduction provides information about Landivar's life and exile to Italy, explains his diverse intellectual heritage, and collects his shorter works (translated into English here for the first time). A 1948 text of the Rusticatio Mexicana, with a translation by Graydon W. Regenos, is included in this volume. This accessible and stimulating account of 'the American Virgil' hi

About this title

Review:

"The Rusticatio Mexicana is a masterpiece. . .the last and worthiest descendant of Virgil's Georgics." -- Companion to Ner-Latin Studies

About the Author:

Andrew Laird is Reader in Classical Literature at Warwick University, and the author of Powers of Expression, Expressions of Power (1999) and A Companion to the Prologue of Apuleius' Metamorphoses (edited with Ahuvia Kahane) (2001).

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury 3PL
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0715632817
• ISBN 13: 9780715632819
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312