Torn from the Nest (Library of Latin America) - Hardcover

Matto De Turner, Clorinda; Polt, John R.

3.39

892 ratings by Goodreads

9780195110050: Torn from the Nest (Library of Latin America)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195110056 ISBN 13: 9780195110050

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

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Clorinda Matto de Turner was the first Peruvian novelist to command an international reputation and the first to dramatize the exploitation of indigenous Latin American people. She believed the task of the novel was to be the photograph that captures the vices and virtues of a people, censuring the former with the appropriate moral lesson and paying its homage of admiration to the latter.
In this tragic tale, Clorinda Matto de Turner explores the relationship between the landed gentry and the indigenous peoples of the Andean mountain communities. While unfolding as a love story rife with secrets and dashed hopes, Torn from the Nest in fact reveals a deep and destructive class disparity, and criticizes the Catholic clergy for blatant corruption. When Lucia and Don Fernando Marin settle in the small hamlet of Killac, the young couple become advocates for the local Indians who are being exploited and oppressed by their priest and governor and by the gentry allied with these two. Considered meddling outsiders, the couple meet violent resistance from the village leaders, who orchestrate an assault on their house and pursue devious and unfair schemes to keep the Indians subjugated. As a romance blossoms between the a member of the gentry and the peasant girl that Lucia and Don Fernando have adopted, a dreadful secret prevents their marriage and brings to a climax the novels exposure of degradation: they share the same fathera parish priest.
Torn from the Nest was first published in Peru in 1889 amidst much enthusiasm and outrage. This fresh translation--the first since 1904--preserves one of Peru's most distinctive and compelling voices.

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Review:

The Peruvian President praised her; the Church excommunicated her; angry mobs rampaged through her house and press. Clearly, writer, publisher, and reformer Clorinda Matto de Turner possessed a knack for igniting both enthusiasm and outrage in her 19th-century audience. The latest installment in Oxford University Press's acclaimed Library of Latin America series, her novel Torn from the Nest may excite a little less protest now than it did in 1889, but it remains a radical document in many ways: in its nascent feminism, its impassioned defense of indigenous rights, and most especially in its critique of Church corruption and advocacy of married Catholic clergy.

Translated into English for the first time since 1904, this seminal Latin American novel uses a time-tested plot--a star-crossed romance between a member of the landed gentry and a doe-eyed mestizo maiden--as a vehicle for exposing how priests, politicians, and Creole landowners exploited Indian populations. "If history is the mirror where future generations are to contemplate the image of generations past, the task of the novel is to be the photograph that captures the vices and virtues of a people," Matto writes in her preface. The key word here is photograph, and Matto demonstrates her commitment to the newfangled method of naturalism throughout the novel, meticulously reproducing the landscape and native customs of the mountain town of Killac. Its plot, language, and characterization, however, are steeped in the worst excesses of Romantic idealism, and the modern reader may find some of its more breathless passages hard to take. As a historical document, however, Torn From the Nest is invaluable for anyone seeking to understand the early days of liberalism--or literary realism--in Latin American intellectual circles.

About the Author:

Clorinda Matto de Turner was a major literary figure in 19th century Peru. She was a pioneer of indigenist literature, and was a crucial Peruvian writer in the shift from Romanticism to Naturalism. The late Antonio Cornejo-Polar was Professor of Spanish at The University of California, Berkeley. John Polt, Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of California, Berkeley, has translated several Spanish and Spanish American authors.

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