GENERAL INSTRUCTION

NOV. 5, 2024 (MONDAY) Day 1: Copy the notes (except the attachments) in one whole bondpaper. Submit to your class
mayor. Class mayor, for the attendance, please affix your signature on the papers of your classmates.
NOV. 6, 2024 (TUESDAY) Day 2: Copy and answer the activities (ACTIVITY 17-A and 17-B) in another bondpaper. Attach
this in the bondpaper where you copied your notes. And again, class mayor, please affix your signature on the papers of your
classmates. Have these be collected and put on my table in Grade 11-Emerald room. Thank you!

Q2- 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

LESSON 17: LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

(Concept Notes)

Latin American Cultural and Literary Evolution (From Political Turmoil to Creative Flourishing)

Despite facing significant political instability and periods of economic hardship, Latin America has remained a vibrant center
for cultural and historical influence. The region has a deep-rooted history shaped by Indigenous civilizations, such as the Aztecs,
Mayans, and Incas, followed by European colonization, which introduced new social, political, and economic dynamics. The struggles
for independence, episodes of military rule, and eventual shifts toward democracy reflect Latin America's resilience.

ECONOMIC IMPACT OF 1929

• Stock market collapse of 1929 and global economic crisis
• Effects on Central and South America
• Colonizers’ economic challenges
• Independence and integration post-World War II

MILITARY RULE AND DEMOCRACY

• 1960s: Military rule over most of Latin America
• 1980s: Shift to democracy
• 21st century: Multiparty states

CHARACTERISTICS OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

• Mysticism, magic, uniqueness, creativity, and wonder
• Pre-Colombian literature and oral traditions
• Recording of mythologies and religious practices by colonizers

COLONIAL LITERATURE
• Accounts from conquistadors like Christopher Columbus and Bernal Diaz del Castillo.
• Descriptions of native treatment, sparking debate in Europe.
• Influence of mestizos, natives, and the Church’s role in literature.

19TH CENTURY LITERATURE: FORMATION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

• Emergence of foundational fictions in the romantic and naturalist traditions.
• Focus on national identity and separating indigenous and colonial influences.
• Women's education and published works, including "Sab" by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda.

MODERNISMO AND INDIGENISMO MOVEMENTS

• Modernismo- led by Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario and his work "Azul.” It is said to be the first Latin American literary
movement which was recognized outside of the region and was also considered to be the first true Latin American literature. It
introduced critiques of the society as of the moment and the plight of the indigenous Latin American citizens.
• Indigenismo - one which is dedicated to the fostering of indigenous cultures and the injustices these cultures were suffering from.
• International recognition of Latin American literature.

AVANT-GARDE TECHNIQUES AND MARVELOUS REALISM

• 1920s: Avant-garde techniques in Mexico
• Realist novels inspired by the Mexican Revolution
• Late 1940s: Alejo Carpentier’s “lo real maravilloso”
• Precursor to “magic realism”

LITERARY THEMES OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE

1. MAGICAL REALISM
• A literary theme where the real world intertwines with magical or fantastical elements, blurring the line between fantasy and
reality.
• Falls under the realism genre, where the world is real but includes elements accepted as normal within that context.

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Origin:
• Term “magischer realismus” first used by Franz Roh in 1925 to describe "New Objectivity" in German art, focusing on the
magical aspects of real-world objects.
• Influenced Latin American writers after it was translated into Spanish in 1927.
• Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier expanded the concept with “marvelous realism” to describe Latin American culture.

KEY DEVELOPMENT:
• In 1955, Angel Flores coined “magical realism” in English, merging magic and marvelous realism. He identified Jorge Luis
Borges as an early magical realist.
• Predecessors include Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, which anticipated magical realism’s themes before its
formalization.

2. POST MODERNISM
• A movement that emerged as a reaction against modernism, which focused on novelty and individual expression.
• Postmodernism is characterized by skepticism, questioning traditional ideas of unity, totality, and absolute truth.

CHARACTERISTICS:
• Emphasizes critique, questioning, and interpretation rather than innovation.
• Seeks to explore a range of meanings and experiences, rather than single narratives.

INFLUENCE IN LITERATURE:
• Coined as the “literature of silence” by Ihab Hassan in the 1970s.
• Focuses on ontology—the nature of existence and being.
• Influential figures include Marquis de Sade, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Ernest Hemingway.
• Invites readers and creators to exist within and become the art, going beyond the artwork itself to explore deeper existential
themes.

LATIN AMERICAN WRITERS

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2. Sara de Ibañez
3. Jorge Luis Borges

1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

He was a famous Colombian novelist, short story writer, journalist, screenwriter, and Novel Prize winner. Throughout his
career, he was known as “Gabo” and had written some of the most endearing and memorable stories of magic realism in Latin
American fiction: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in Time of Cholera, and Autumn of the Patriarch. He was also a staunch
critic of Colombian politics and foreign policies.
He was recognized as a proponent of magical realism, which opened the door to other writers from Latin America, like Isabel
Allende, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes and Jorge Amado. The characters and circumstances in Marquez’s fiction would be
considered larger than life and unbelievable by most Western readers, and yet these are inspired by the reality of Colombia and Latin
America.
ATTACHMENT NO. 1 --- Excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2. Sara de Ibañez
She is a poet from Uruguay. She has won many literary awards during her career and had written some of the most famous
collections of poetry in Latin America. Some of Ibáñez's poems reveal nature and the inner soul as sources of inspiration. A poet's
poet, Ibáñez in much of her work allows often dark symbolism, ornate expression, and attention to lyrical technique to predominate
over human issues. A key theme of her verses is the anguished rift between physical and spiritual love. Additional sources of
inspiration are historical themes and nature.
Ibáñez's major works include Canto a Montevideo (1941), La batalla (1967), and Canto póstumo (1973). She was acclaimed
as a major poet by Gabriela Mistral, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, and Cecilia Meireles.

ATTACHMENT NO. 2 ---- Island on the Earth

By Sara de Ibañez
3. Jorge Luis Borges
He was an Argentinian short-story writer, poet, translator, and essayist. He has triumphed his work as those that embrace the
“character of unreality in all of literature.” His works are often interrelated with themes of dreams, labyrinths, libraries, and fictional
writers.

ATTACHMENT NO. 3 --- The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires

By Jorge Luis Borges
English Translation by Alastair Reid

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ACTIVITY 17-A: Directions: Fill-in the table below.

Author Country Literary Text Literary Theme

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sara de Ibañez
Jorge Luis Borges

ACTIVITY 17-B: Encircle the letter of the correct answer.

1. It is characterized by mysticism, magic, uniqueness, raw creativity, and wonder. It all started in the pre-Colombian literature of
their times, when the ancient civilizations of the Aztecs and Mayans spread stories through the oral tradition.
A. Latin American Literature B. African Literature C. European Literature D. Asian Literature
2. In the late 19th century, a new poetic movement called ____________ came from Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario’s work entitled
Azul. It is said to be the first Latin American literary movement which was recognized outside of the region and was also considered
to be the first true Latin American literature.
A. indigenismo B. postmodernism C. lo real maravilloso D. modernism
3. It is a tradition of writing that originated in Latin America and goes against European-influenced notions of reality or realism by
portraying events and characters that are unbelievable or larger than life.
A. colonialism B. realism C. magic realism D. postmodernism
4. What does it mean to be “skeptical” in postmodernism?
A. It means that there is always an air of critique and emphasis on a certain work of art.
B. It means to associate with the novelty of doing something, to create something unique.
C. It explored possibilities and individuality.
D. When you create something, you need not to view it with the eyes of a critic.
5. What is the literary work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez that falls into magical realism?
A. One Hundred Years of Solitude B. One Hundred Years of Solitary
C. Island on the Earth D. The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires
6. His works are often interrelated with themes of dreams, labyrinths, libraries, and fictional writers.
A. Gabriel Garcia Marquez B. Jorge Amado C. Sara de Ibañez D. Jorge Luis Borges
7. The following examples are the Sara de Ibañez’s works, except ________________.
A. Island on the Earth B. Canto a Montevideo C. Autumn of the Patriarch D.Canto póstumo
8. Influential figures of post-modernism include the following, except:
A. Marquis de Sade B. Franz Kafka C. Samuel Beckett D. Angel Flores
9. To whom this line belongs to and from what literary piece that this line can be found?
“The cart-shed wall was unanimous for Yrigoyen.
Some piano was banging out tangos by Saborido.”
A. Gabriel Garcia Marques – One Hundred Years of Solitude
B. Jorge Luis Borges – The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires
C. Sara de Ibañez – Island on the Earth
D. Gabriel Garcia Marques – Chronicle of A Death Foretold
10. In Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, who proclaimed that in a short time, man will be able to see what is happening
in any place in the world without leaving his own house?
A. José Arcadio Buendía B. Melquíades C. Úrsula Iguarán D. Monk Hermann

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ATTACHMENT NO. 1
Excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude (By: Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his
father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water
that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many
things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March, a family of ragged
gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions.
First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as
Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia.
He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble
down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been
lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind
Melquíades’ magical irons.
‘Things have a life of their own,’ the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. ‘It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.’
José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic,
thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who
was an honest man, warned him: ‘It won’t work for that.’ But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of
gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals
to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him.
‘Very soon we’ll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house,’ her husband replied. For several months he
worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots
along and reciting Melquíades’ incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century
armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous
stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside
a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman’s hair around its neck.
In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they
exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the
telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an
arm’s length away. “Science has eliminated distance,” Melquíades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is
happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”
A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in
the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun’s rays. José Arcadio Buendía, who had still not been consoled for
the failure of big magnets, conceived the idea of using that invention as a weapon of war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him,
but he finally accepted the two magnetized ingots and three colonial coins in exchange for the magnifying glass. Úrsula wept in
consternation.
That money was from a chest of gold coins that her father had put together over an entire life of privation and that she had
buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. José Arcadio Buendía made no attempt to console her,
completely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attempt to
show the effects of the glass on enemy troops, he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun’s rays and suffered burns which
turned into sores that took a long time to heal.
Over the protests of his wife, who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention, at one point he was ready to set the house on
fire. He would spend hours on end in his room, calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting
together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction.
He sent it to the government, accompanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory
sketches; by a messenger who crossed the mountains, got lost in measureless swamps, forded stormy rivers, and was on the point of
perishing under the lash of despair, plague, and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by the mules that carried
the mail. In spite of the fact that a trip to the capital was little less than impossible at that time, José Arcadio Buendía promised to
undertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put on some practical demonstrations of his invention for the
military authorities and could train them himself in the complicated art of solar war.
For several years he waited for an answer. Finally, tired of waiting, he bemoaned to Melquíades the failure of his project and
the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof of his honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifying glass,
and he left him in addition some Portuguese maps and several instruments of navigation. In his own handwriting he set down a concise
synthesis of the studies by Monk Hermann which he left José Arcadio so that he would be able to make use of the astrolabe, the
compass, and the sextant.
José Arcadio Buendía spent the long months of the rainy season shut up in a small room that he had built in the rear of the
house so that no one would disturb his experiments. Having completely abandoned his domestic obligations, he spent entire nights in
the courtyard watching the course of the stars and he almost contracted sunstroke from trying to establish an exact method to ascertain
noon. When he became an expert in the use and manipulation of his instruments, he conceived a notion of space that allowed him to
navigate across unknown seas, to visit uninhabited territories, and to establish relations with splendid beings without having to leave
his study.

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 That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talking to himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone,
as Úrsula and the children broke their backs in the garden, growing banana and caladium, cassava and yams, ahuyama roots and eggplants.
Suddenly, without warning, his feverish activity was interrupted and was replaced by a kind of fascination. He spent several days as if he
were bewitched, softly repeating to himself a string of fearful conjectures without giving credit to his own understanding. Finally, one Tuesday in
December, at lunchtime, all at once he released the whole weight of his torment. The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august
solemnity with which their father, devastated by his prolonged vigil and by the wrath of his imagination, revealed his discovery to them:
“The earth is round, like an orange.”

ATTACHMENT NO. 2
Island on the Earth
By Sara de Ibañez

In the north the cold and its broken jasmine.

In the east a nightingale full of thorns.
In the south the rose in its airy mines,
and in the west a road deep in thought.

In the north an angel lies gagged.

In the east the song command its mists.
In the south my tender bunch of thin palm trees,
and in the west my door and my worry.

A flight of cloud or sigh could

trace this finest of all borders
that amply defends my refuge.
A distant retribution of wave bursts
and bites into your foreign oblivion,
my dry island in midst the battle.
Source: http://www.jbeilharz.de/poetas/ibanez/islas-e.html
ATTACHMENT NO. 3
The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires
By Jorge Luis Borges
English Translation by Alastair Reid

And was it along this torpid muddy river

that the prows came to found my native city?
The little painted boats must have suffered the steep surf
among the root-clumps of the horse-brown current.

Pondering well, let us suppose that the river

was blue then like an extension of the sky,
with a small red star inset to mark the spot
where Juan Diaz fasted and the Indians dined.

But for sure a thousand men and other thousands

arrived across a sea that was five moons wide,
still infested with mermaids and sea serpents
and magnetic boulders that sent the compass wild.

On the coast they put up a few ramshackle huts

and slept uneasily. This, they claim, in the Riachuelo,
but that is a story dreamed up in Boca.
It was really a city block in my district – Palermo.

A whole square block, but set down in open country,

attended by dawns and rains and hard southeasters,
identical to that block which still stands in my neighborhood:
Guatemala – Serrano – Paraguay – Gurruchaga.

A general store pink as the back of a playing card

shone bright; in the back there was poker talk.
The corner bar flowered into life as a local bully,
already cock of his walk, resentful, tough.

The first barrel organ teetered over the horizon

with its clumsy progress, its habaneras, its wop.
The cart-shed wall was unanimous for Yrigoyen.
Some piano was banging out tangos by Saborido.

A cigar store perfumed the desert like a rose.

The afternoon had established its yesterdays,
and men took on together an illusory past.
Only one thing was missing – the street had no other side.

Hard to believe Buenos Aires had any beginning.

I feel it to be as eternal as air and water.
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