The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time, and Identity

Jaime Javier Rodríguez

Published by University of Texas Press 2010

The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War

Narrative, Time, and Identity

Jaime Javier Rodríguez

https://doi.org/10.7560/722453

Overview
Contents

About this book

The literary archive of the U.S.-Mexican War (1846–1848) opens to view the conflicts and relationships across one of the most contested borders in the Americas. Most studies of this literature focus on the war's nineteenth-century moment of national expansion. In The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War, Jaime Javier Rodríguez brings the discussion forward to our own moment by charting a new path into the legacies of a military conflict embedded in the cultural cores of both nations.

Rodríguez's groundbreaking study moves beyond the terms of Manifest Destiny to ask a fundamental question: How do the war's literary expressions shape contemporary tensions and exchanges among Anglo Americans, Mexicans, and Mexican Americans. By probing the war's traumas, anxieties, and consequences with a fresh attention to narrative, Rodríguez shows us the relevance of the U.S.-Mexican War to our own era of demographic and cultural change. Reading across dime novels, frontline battle accounts, Mexican American writings and a wide range of other popular discourse about the war, Rodríguez reveals how historical awareness itself lies at the center of contemporary cultural fears of a Mexican "invasion," and how the displacements caused by the war set key terms for the ways Mexican Americans in subsequent generations would come to understand their own identities. Further, this is also the first major comparative study that analyzes key Mexican war texts and their impact on Mexico's national identity.

Author / Editor information

Javier Rodríguez is Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Texas.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Narratives, Borders, Dreams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
ONE U.S.-Mexican War Novelettes and Dime Novels: Cousins, Seducers, Bandits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
TWO Antinarratives of the U.S.-Mexican War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
THREE Nation and Lamentation: The Catalysis of Mexicanidad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
FOUR Mexican Self-Consciousness: El monedero and the Quest to Reform Mexico Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
FIVE Mexican American Visions: Grief and Liberation in Global Time-Space Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Epilogue Narrative Arcs, Arrows of Time Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Appendix Novelette Titles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320

eBook

Published: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 9780292792845