The Latin American Short Story : An Annotated Guide to Anthologies and Criticism

The enormous body of short story anthologies from the nineteen countries of Spanish America and Brazil testifies to their importance for writers, editors, readers, and, especially, for schools and universities, teachers and students. The study of anthologies and their contents can be particularly revealing for many of the questions looming large in critical discourse, particularly those on canon formation and the relations between literature and cultural institutions; but researching this corpus is difficult because it varies greatly in quality, distribution, and format. The present volume for the first time gathers this mass of material and organizes it for systematic study.

The main section comprises annotated listings of 1302 short story anthologies: those with stories from all or most of the countries grouped together, including a section of English-language anthologies; those from countries of a region; and those from individual nations. For most entries a full listing of contents is provided along with brief commentary. A second section comprises annotated bibliographies of criticism of the short story, similarly arranged with materials for Latin America as a whole as well as regionally and nationally. The volume ends with four indexes: of authors of the stories; of authors of essays, introductions, and other critical materials; of titles of the critical works; and of themes. An essential tool for scholars working on Latin American narrative, this bibliography will also serve as a practical finding aid for individual writers and stories.