1st Edition
The Labyrinth of Love A Tale of Latin American Romance
This book studies the various narrative shades of love in twentieth-century Latin American fiction. It examines writings by Isabel Allende, Roberto Arlt, García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa. The author provides a close textual reading of each novel and discusses how humans make sense of their lives through love. He shifts the focus of these writings from political violence and historical disillusionment to the illusion of love.
An important contribution to Latin American literary criticism, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of literature, history, Latin American literature, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, comparative literature, and sociology.
1: A Violent Romance 2: The Body in Pain Isabel Allende’s Tale of Love 3: Shades of Love in El Amor en los Tiempos del Cholera 4: The Underground Man in El Amor Brujo 5: Travesuras de una niña mala: The Temptation of the Impossible
Biography
Alberto Castelli is a writer and a humanities professor at Hainan University, China. Chiefly, he is engaged with Modernism, Postmodern dynamics, and Cross-Cultural Studies. He is the author of “Perspectives on Asia: is China kitsch?” (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and “Bipolarism in the Nineteenth Century Novel” (University of Toronto Quarterly, 2023). Most recently Castelli’s publications include Eros and Thanatos. Love Across Civilizations (Vernon Press, 2023) and Love, Beauty or Morality (Springer, 2024).
"Probing into the entrenched bond between love, sexuality, and violence and its function of state-building in twentieth century Latin America, this book is a fascinating re-interpretation of the literature within the context of the political and social tumults. Rethinking history in an age when authoritative history is mistrusted, its clarification on the “structure of feeling” of Latin American geo-cultural reality points to a cartographic imagination and re-enchantment of the complex reality. A must read for students of literature, sociology and cultural studies."
Xiaoping Wang, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Tongji University, China.
"In Labyrinths of Love, Alberto Castelli offers sensitive and perceptive new investigations of some of the major voices in Latin American literature. In so doing, he examines various conceptions of love and how they both intersect with and subvert larger sociopolitical concerns. Castelli's volume delivers a strong combination of theoretical understanding and close reading."
James M. Decker (Ph.D.), Co-Editor, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies.
