Elemental Geographies

This scholarly book (Literary Criticism and Geography) expands upon previous interpretations of Chilean Baldomero Lillo and Argentine Leopoldo Lugones in order to read each author against the other-and both against the grain. Departing from staid literary paradigms that see Lugones as the quintessential Modernist and Lillo as Zola's Latin American Naturalist counterpart, Fraser explores those aspects of each writer's work that have resisted canonical explanation. Each chapter is...
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This scholarly book (Literary Criticism and Geography) expands upon previous interpretations of Chilean Baldomero Lillo and Argentine Leopoldo Lugones in order to read each author against the other-and both against the grain. Departing from staid literary paradigms that see Lugones as the quintessential Modernist and Lillo as Zola's Latin American Naturalist counterpart, Fraser explores those aspects of each writer's work that have resisted canonical explanation. Each chapter is devoted to an individual element-Earth, Fire, Air and Water-and dialogues with geographical understandings of the intersection between space and culture.WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:Fraser's unexpected comparison of the prose works by Chilean Baldomero Lillo (1867-1923) and the Argentine Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938) has resulted in a fascinating and insightful study that opens new avenues of investigation. Focusing on issues related to modernization, the abuse of natural resources, and the unpredictability of scientific explorations, Fraser makes these early twentieth-century texts relevant today and to disciplines beyond literary studies.-CATHY L. JRADE, Vanderbilt University, Chancellor's Professor of Spanish and Department ChairIn Elemental Geographies Benjamin Fraser-known for his work on Spanish literature and culture successfully crosses over into the study of Spanish American literature with a comparative examination of the short fiction of two seemingly disparate writers. Fraser illuminates the points of convergence between Lillo and Lugones while carrying out an analysis of exceptional breadth that should appeal to readers interested in Spanish American modernismo, studies of sound and space, ecocriticism, and the study of early twentieth century occult sciences.-NAOMI E. LINDSTROM, University of Texas at Austin, Professor of Spanish and PortugueseBenjamin Fraser has constructed a singularly enlightening, multi-faceted matrix of the overlapping areas-and previously uncharted territories-that lie between and among naturalism and modernismo; literature and geography; science and the occult; landscape, seascape, and soundscape. With Elemental Geographies, Fraser adds a highly original and fecund analysis to the field of Latin American literary and cultural studies, illuminating the prose works of Leopoldo Lugones and Baldomero Lillo with imminence and urgency for the 21st-century reader.-BRUCE DEAN WILLIS, University of Tulsa, Associate Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature_BENJAMIN FRASER is Associate Professor of Hispanic Cultural Studies and Film at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. The author/editor of nine books and some sixty articles in Hispanic Studies and beyond, he is the current Managing Editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, the Founding and Executive Editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and an Associate Editor of the Journal Hispania.