Marcel Proust and Spanish America: From Critical Response to Narrative Dialogue

The multi-volume novel of Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27), began to receive attention in Spanish America in 1920, and, as Herbert Craig meticulously shows, this French connection would continue throughout the twentieth century. He traces it both through the literary criticism devoted to Proust in the New World and through the impact of the Recherche upon the Spanish American novel, which according Alejo Carpentier was simply revolutionary. Craig explains how the Recherche affected numerous Spanish American novels and short stories in diverse ways, and how Proust's themes and subjects (high society, love, illness and consciousness, etc.) influenced and inspired various writers, particularly those of a modern persuasion, such as Manuel Mujica Láinez, Yolanda Oreamuno, and Alejo Carpentier.