LT 360 - Argentine Literature and the Formation of National Identity

This course focuses on four main topics related to different types of writing experiences that took place in modern Argentina. These topics reflect specific historical contexts and different cultural practices: “Tensions in Argentine culture: from a library of English books to the worship of courage”, “Ways of excluding and including the Other through literature: tango, immigration, and politics”, “Eva Perón: the talking corpse”, and “Language, sexuality, and politics”. This organization does not only allow to get acquainted with certain group of texts belonging to different genres (short story, novel, and poetry of the most important Argentine writers from the 20th century, plus 19th century author Domingo Faustino Sarmiento), but also to discuss issues like the construction of a national identity from literature's point of view and through the quarrel over what is “authentic” and what is not. Our journey also makes a connection between literary discourse and other social discourses, namely: the political, the historical, and the cultural ones.