The Anti-Castro Novel

H ISTORICAL PARALLELS are usually risky affairs. They are just plausible enough to cause one to yield to the temptation of establishing laws and movements. Yet the dissimilarities may be sufficiently significant to keep the critic from attempting to formulate neat categories. System building is merely the endeavor to introduce some degree of order into a world of seemingly chaotic and unclassifiable phenomena. Predictable categories make their appearance when one discusses the relationship of literature to social upheaval. The writer, in many instances, can be expected to react like a sensitive barometer and reflect the anxieties and aspirations of his readers. His work is an outgrowth of the social milieu in which he functions. He is situated in time and place. He is the result of definite social pressures; he may also be instrumental in contributing to social change. The problem acquires sharpened focus in the case of a society characterized by dictatorship and oppression. When the dictator is finally overthrown, the new liberating regime sets about consolidating its position. It will then expect the writer, the intellectual in general, to give of himself in the process of building the new order

Linguistics · Latin American Literature Studies · Philosophy

• The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature

  Open Access•Cathy Jrade, Angéla Gonzalez et al.•The Cambridge history of Latin…•1996

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