Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
into debt and leads to her decision to commit
suicide. The character was important to Flaubert,
who felt her choices exemplified the problem of
women who lived in a society trapped in materi-
alism.
As a result of his success with Madame Bovary,
Flaubert enjoyed much fame as a writer during
the 1860s in the court of Napoleon III. He
counted among his close friends Emile ZOLA,
George SAND, Hippolyte Taine, and Ivan TUR-
GENEV. All of these writers shared with him simi-
lar aesthetic ideals and a dedication to the
realistic and nonjudgmental representation of life
through literature.
His later works included Salammbô (1862),
about the siege of Carthage, and L’Éducation senti-
mentale (1869), a novel of forbidden romance be-
tween a young man and an older married woman
set against the backdrop of the 1848 revolution.
With his concern for precise form and for detailed
observation of human nature, Flaubert began to be
associated with a new school of naturalistic writ-
ers. He took the approach that it was the goal of the
novelist to remain neutral, explaining and teaching
but never judging. Many younger writers, such as
Guy de MAUPASSANT and Anton CHEKOV adopted
this outlook.
Although Flaubert was highly respected as a
writer, his personal life was shadowed by financial
difficulties. After the death of his father, he took up
residence with his mother and young niece, who
was forced to declare bankruptcy. Flaubert spent
much of his fortune assisting her and her family.
During his final years, Flaubert lived as a virtual
hermit, working on a collection of three stories,
Trois contes, and on the long novel Bouvard et
Pécuchet. Before completing the novel, he died
from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Other Works by Gustave Flaubert
Early Writings. Translated by Robert Griffin. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Flaubert–Sand: The Correspondance. Translated by
Francis Steegmuller and Barbara Bray. New York:
Knopf, 1993.
The First Sentimental Education. Translated by Dou-
glas Garman. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1972.
The Temptation of St. Anthony. Garden City, N.Y.: Ha-
leyon House, 1950.
Works about Gustave Flaubert
Berg, William J., and Laurey K. Martin. Gustave
Flaubert. Boston: Twayne, 1997.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert,
1821–1857. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991.
Wall, Geoffrey. Gustave Flaubert: A Life. London:
Faber and Faber, 2001.
Fo, Dario (1926– ) playwright
Dario Fo was born in San Giano, Italy, to Pina
(Rota) Fo, an author, and Felice Fo, who divided
his time between acting in an amateur theater
company and work as a railway station master. As
a child, Fo spent vacations with his grandparents
on a farm and traveled around the countryside
with his grandfather, selling produce from a
wagon. His grandfather told imaginative stories in-
fused with local news to attract customers. This
was Fo’s introduction to the narrative tradition. In
his youth, he sat for hours in taverns, listening to
glassblowers and fishermen spin tall tales filled
with political satire, planting the seeds of his own
satirical work.
Fo moved to Milan in 1940 to study art at the
Brera Art Academy. During this time, he began to
write stories and sketches that were influenced by
traveling storytellers. “Nothing gets down as
deeply into the mind and intelligence as satire,” Fo
said in a statement cited by James Fisher. “The end
of satire is the first alarm bell signaling the end of
real democracy.”
Much of Fo’s satire focuses on political-reli-
gious issues. His one-man show Comical Mystery
(1969), for example, was a mockery of Catholic
hierarchy. The play, considered a cornerstone of his
collective work, is his own version of the Gospels
with commentary on church corruption.
148 Fo, Dario
Sketches in his play include one about a man
without legs who shuns a healing from Christ
and another depicting a wedding feast at Cana
told from the perspective of a drunkard. The
show was presented on television in 1977. Ac-
cording to Tony Mitchell in Dario Fo: People’s
Court Jester, the Vatican described the program
as the “most blasphemous show in the history of
television.”
In 1970, Fo performed I’d Die Tonight If I Did-
n’t Think It Had Been Worth It (1970), a play com-
paring Palestinian freedom fighters and Italian
partisans. He followed this the same year with Ac-
cidental Death of an Anarchist (1970), a play about
an anarchist who dies while in police custody. The
play closed at the Cinema Rossini when police
pressured the theater owners.
More than 40 of Fo’s plays have been trans-
lated into dozens of languages. Fo himself has
also performed on radio and film and once
hosted a controversial Italian television program
in 1962. In 1997, he won the Nobel Prize in
literature for his theatrical contributions, which
emphasized international topics ranging from
AIDS to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Another Work by Dario Fo
We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! and Other Plays. Trans-
lated by Ron Jenkins. New York: Theatre Commu-
nications Group, 2001.
Works about Dario Fo
Fisher, James. “Images of the Fool in Italian Theatre
from Pirandello to Fo.” Available online at
http://persweb.wabash.edu/facstaff/fisherj/new/
ItalianTheatre.html
Mitchell, Tony. Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester. Lon-
don: Methuen, 1999.
Fontane, Theodor (Henri Théodor
Fontane)
(1819–1898) novelist, balladeer
Theodor Fontane was born in Neurippen, Prussia.
His parents, Louis Henri and Emilie Labry
Fontane, descended from French Huguenots who
moved to Prussia in the 1600s. Fontane’s education
consisted of private tutors and public schools in
Swinemünde and Neurippen. As a youth, he joined
literary clubs and wrote poems and historical tales.
Pursuing the profession of his father, Fontane
served as an apprentice to an apothecary from
1836 to 1844. After serving in the Prussian mili-
tary, Fontane operated his own pharmacy in Berlin
until 1849. In 1850, he married Emilie Rouanet-
Kummer.
During his lifetime, Fontane achieved his great-
est recognition as a balladeer. He published his first
two books of ballads in 1850. In 1852, he started
to work as a newspaper correspondent. He traveled
extensively in the 1860s and 1870s and wrote five
travel books based on his experiences, also wrote
theater reviews and briefly served as secretary of
the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1876 before he
started to write novels. His first novel Vor dem
Sturm: Roman aus dem Winter 1812 auf 1813 (Be-
fore the Storm: A Novel of the Winter of 1812–1813,
1878) is considered one of the finest historical
novels in German literature for its artistic por-
trayal of the Prussian aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and
peasantry during the Napoleonic Wars. He wrote
three more historical novels before turning his at-
tention to Berlin society.
Fontane’s greatest literary influence was Scot-
tish writer Sir Walter Scott. An accomplished
writer of dialogue, Fontane helped pioneer the
modernist trend of emphasizing conversation
rather than plot. His ironic observations are criti-
cal of the prejudices and conventions of society,
but his works still exhibit spontaneity, charm, and
wit. His novels engage the themes of money,
morality, guilt, retribution, and class hierarchy. His
biographer Helen Chambers concludes that
Fontane made a “unique and refined contribution
to world fiction.”
Other Works by Theodor Fontane
Effi Briest. Translated by Hugh Rorrison and Helen
Chambers. London: Penguin, 2000.
Journeys to England in Victoria’s Early Days. Translated
by Dorothy Harrison. London: Massie, 1939.
Fontane, Theodor 149
A Work about Theodor Fontane
Chambers, Helen. The Changing Image of Theodor
Fontane. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House Inc.,
1997.
Foscolo, Ugo (Niccolò Foscolo)
(1778–1827) playwright, novelist, poet,
essayist
Ugo Foscolo was born on the island of Zante in
Greece to Andrea Foscolo, a ship’s physician, and
Diamanatina Spathis. He was brought up speaking
both Italian and Greek. Young Ugo changed resi-
dences at least twice when his father was named a
ship’s physician in the Levant and then again when
he was made hospital director in Spalato.
Stability was not a big part of Foscolo’s life.
When his father died in 1788, Foscolo was forced
to live with relatives in Zante. When his family was
reunited in 1792 in Venice, Foscolo was enrolled
in the San Capriano school in Murano, where he
mastered Greek and Latin.
In about 1794, Foscolo began to experiment with
poetry and to visit Venetian salons. Isabella Teotochi,
also Greek, ran a salon that attracted great intellec-
tuals. Teotochi eventually became Foscolo’s lover,
benefactor, and muse. Her decision to annul her
marriage and secretly wed another seemed to be the
catalyst for Foscolo’s 1802 novel Last Letters of Jacopo
Ortis, a novel in letters modeled after the works of
Samuel Richardson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau that
depicts the doomed love of Ortis for Teresa.
One of Foscolo’s most famous collections of
poems is On Sepulchres (1807), which speaks about
the struggle of civilization and displays the ROMAN-
TIC fascination with ruins: “Even the last ruins, the
Pierian sisters gladden / The desert wastes with
their singing, and harmony.”
Foscolo was one of the major voices of his gen-
eration. From his precocious youth to the end of
his life, he held tight to romantic ideals.
A Work about Ugo Foscolo
Radcliff-Umstead, Douglas. Ugo Foscolo. Boston:
Twayne, 1970.
Fraire, Isabel (1934– ) poet, translator
Isabel Fraire was born in Mexico City and raised
in New York. A student of philosophy at the Au-
tonomous National University of Mexico, by the
early 1960s, she was writing poetry, literary criti-
cism, reviews, and translations, and she became a
member of the editorial council of the prestigious
review, Revista Mexicana de Literatura (Mexican
Review of Literature). Although her earliest
poems appeared in 1959 in 15 Poems of Isabel
Fraire, her first published book of poems is gen-
erally considered to be Only This Light, which ap-
peared in 1969.
Fraire’s translations from English to Spanish
of such American poets as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot,
Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos
Williams, and W. S. Auden have been collected
in Seis poetas de lengua inglesa (Six Poets Writing in
English, 1976) and have appeared in many Latin
American journals and anthologies. In 1978, she
was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for her
third collection of poetry, Poems in the Lap of
Death (1977). Of her work, Mexican poet and
critic Octavio
PAZ has said, “Her poetry is a con-
tinual flight of images that disappear, reappear,
and return to disappear” (quoted at www.colum-
bia.edu/~gmo9/poetry/fraire/fraire-bio.html).
Other Works by Isabel Fraire
Isabel Fraire: Poems. Translated by Thomas Hoek-
sema. Athens, Ohio: Mundus Artium Press, 1975.
Poems in the Lap of Death. Translated by Thomas
Hoeksema. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Latin American Liter-
ary Review Press, 1981.
Frame, Janet (1924– ) novelist
Janet Frame was born in Dunedin, South Island,
New Zealand, and grew up in Oamuru, South Is-
land. The daughter of a railway-worker father and
an encouraging mother who wrote poetry and fic-
tion, she studied to be a teacher at Dunedin Teach-
ers’ College and the University of Otago. Her early
life was a happy one, despite poverty, her brother’s
epilepsy, and the drowning of two of her sisters. Be-
150 Foscolo, Ugo
fore she was able to work as a teacher, however, she
was incorrectly diagnosed as being schizophrenic
and hospitalized in mental wards for almost 10
years. During this time, she wrote her first collection
of short stories, The Lagoon (1951), which saved her
from being lobotomized when the book won a liter-
ary award shortly before the surgery was scheduled.
Finally able to leave the hospital, Frame then lived in
a friend’s garden shed, where she completed her first
novel, Owls Do Cry (1957), which established her as
an important novelist. As Prudence Hockley notes
in her review in 500 Great Books by Women (1994),
“The special quality of this novel lies in its poetic,
hallucinatory, perceptive voice, imbued with the
surreal vision of childhood and madness.”
Afraid that she might be forced back to a men-
tal hospital, Frame then left New Zealand in 1956,
living in England and Spain until she finally re-
turned to New Zealand in 1963. She is the author
of numerous novels, including Faces in the Water
(1982), a first-person narrative told in the voice of
Estina, a woman incarcerated in a mental institu-
tion, and a three-volume autobiography, To the Is-
land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984), and The
Envoy from Mirror City (1985). Her style of writing
is considered unique, moving between realism and
a more nonlinear exploration of the nature of real-
ity. Although her earlier novels focus on the inner
world of children, outcasts, and the insane, her
later novels are considered poetic and
POSTMOD-
ERN, with a freshness of language and voice that
makes them unique. She has been awarded every
major New Zealand literary prize and is considered
New Zealand’s best-known contemporary novelist.
Other Works by Janet Frame
The Adaptable Man: A Novel. New York: George
Braziller, 1965, 2000.
The Edge of the Alphabet. New York: George Braziller,
1992.
Works about Janet Frame
King, Michael. Wrestling with the Angel: A Life of Janet
Frame. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press,
2000.
Panny, Judith Dell. I Have What I Gave: The Fiction of
Janet Frame. New York: George Braziller, 1993.
Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939) philosopher,
psychologist
Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg, today in the
Czech Republic, to Jewish parents, Jacob Freud, a
small-time textile merchant, and Amalia Freud.
Although the family was Jewish, Jacob Freud was
not at all religious, and Sigmund Freud grew up
an avowed atheist. When he was four years old,
the family moved to Vienna, Austria, where Freud
lived for most of his life. He was a brilliant stu-
dent, always at the head of his class; however, the
options for Jewish boys in Austria were limited by
the government to medicine and law. As Freud
was interested in science, he entered the Univer-
sity of Vienna medical school in 1873. After three
years, he became deeply involved in research,
which delayed his M.D. until 1881. Independent
research was not financially feasible, however, so
Freud established a private medical practice, spe-
cializing in neurology. He became interested in
the use of hypnosis to treat hysteria and other
mental illnesses, and with the help of a grant, he
went to France in 1885 to study under Jean-Mar-
tin Charcot, a famous neurologist, known all over
Europe for his studies of hysteria and various uses
of hypnosis. On his return to Vienna in 1886,
Freud married and opened a practice specializ-
ing in disorders of the nervous system and the
brain. He tried to use hypnosis to treat his pa-
tients but quickly abandoned it, finding that he
could produce better results by placing patients in
a relaxing environment and allowing them to
speak freely. He then analyzed whatever they said
to identify the traumatic effects in the past that
caused their current suffering. The way his own
self-analysis contributed to the growth of his
ideas during this period may be seen in letters
and drafts of papers sent to a colleague, Wilhelm
Fliess.
After several years of practice, Freud published
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), the first major
Freud, Sigmund 151
statement of his theories, in which he introduced
the public to the notion of the unconscious mind.
He explains in the book that dreams, as products
of the unconscious mind, can reveal past psycho-
logical traumas that, repressed from conscious
awareness, underlie certain kinds of neurotic dis-
orders. In addition, he attempts to establish a pro-
visional matrix for interpreting and analyzing
dreams in terms of their psychological signifi-
cance.
In his second book, The Psychopathology of
Everyday Life (1901), Freud expands the idea of the
unconscious mind by introducing the concept of
the dynamic unconscious. In this work, Freud the-
orizes that everyday forgetfulness and accidental
slips of the tongue (today commonly called
Freudian slips) reveal many meaningful things
about the person’s unconscious psychological
state. The ideas outlined in these two works were
not taken seriously by most readers, which is not a
surprise considering that, at the time, most psy-
chological disorders were treated as physical ill-
nesses, if treated at all.
Freud’s major clinical discoveries, including his
five major case histories, were published in Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). In this
work, he elaborates his theories about infantile
sexuality, the meanings of the id, the ego, and the
superego, and the Oedipus complex (the inevitable
but tabooed incestuous attraction in families, and
the associated fear of castration and intrafamilial
jealousy).
In 1902, Freud was appointed full professor at
the University of Vienna and developed a large fol-
lowing. In 1906, he formed the Vienna Psychoana-
lytic Society, but some political infighting resulted
in division among members of the group (Carl
Jung, for instance, split from the group with bitter
feelings). Freud continued to work on his theories
and, in 1909, presented them internationally at a
conference at Clark University in Massachusetts.
Freud’s name became a household word after the
conference. In his later period, in Beyond the Plea-
sure Principle (1920) and The Ego and the Id
(1923), he modified his structural model of the
psychic apparatus. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and
Anxiety (1926), he applied psychoanalysis to larger
social problems.
In 1923, Freud was diagnosed with cancer of the
jaw as a result of years of cigar smoking. In 1938,
the Nazi party burned Freud’s books. They also
confiscated his passport, but the leading intellectu-
als around the world voiced their protest, and he
was allowed to leave Austria. Freud died in Eng-
land in 1939.
Freud made an enormous contribution to the
field of psychology: He established our basic ideas
about sexuality and the unconscious and also in-
fluenced, to some extent, the way we read literary
works by establishing premises for psychoanalytic
criticism. His own case studies are often inter-
preted for their literary merit.
Other Works by Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents. Translated by Peter
Gay. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
The Future of an Illusion. Translated by Peter Gay.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.
Works about Sigmund Freud
Bernheimer, Charles, and Claire Kahane, eds. In
Dora’s Case: Freud-Hysteria—Feminism. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Erwin, Edward. The Freud Encyclopedia: Theory,
Therapy, and Culture. New York: Garland Press,
2002.
Mitchell, Stephen. Freud and Beyond: A History of
Modern Psychoanalytical Thought. New York:
Basic Books, 1996.
Freyre, Gilberto de Mello (1900–1987)
nonfiction writer, sociologist
Born on March 15 in the city of Recife in the state
of Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil, Gilberto
de Mello Freyre is one of the country’s leading in-
tellectual figures. After completing his B.A. in
Brazil, he continued his studies in the United States
where he earned an M.A. at Columbia, studying
under anthropologist Franz Boas. After further
152 Freyre, Gilberto de Mello
studies in Portugal, he returned to Brazil and im-
mersed himself in life in his region of origin, be-
coming good friends with other northeastern
writers such as José Lins do Rego.
Freyre is known for his sociological and anthro-
pological texts about Brazilian life. His argument
that the specific nature of Portuguese colonization
led to a mixed-race society in its colonies is where
the concept of Brazil’s status as a racial democracy
originates. Freyre’s most important texts are The
Mansions and the Shanties: The Making of Modern
Brazil (1936) and The Masters and the Slaves: A
Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization
(1933). His works have left an indelible mark on
Brazilian intellectual and popular history.
Another Work by Gilberto Freyre
The Gilberto Freyre Reader. Translated by Barbara
Shelby. New York: Knopf, 1974.
Fried, Erich (1921–1988) poet, short-story
writer
Erich Fried was born in Vienna, Austria, to Hugo
and Nellie Stein Fried. In the mid-1920s, his fa-
ther’s shipping company went bankrupt, and the
family survived on the money his mother earned
selling porcelain figures. After the Nazis sent his fa-
ther to a concentration camp in 1938, Fried fled to
London where he settled permanently. During
World War II, he helped his mother and other Jews
escape from Nazi-controlled Europe. Fried held
many jobs after the war, including dairy chemist,
librarian, and worker in a glass factory. He was a
commentator for the British Broadcasting System
from 1952 to 1968.
Fried published his first collection of poems in
1944. From the 1950s through the 1980s, he pub-
lished more than 25 volumes of verse and estab-
lished his reputation as a lyric poet. Fried also
translated the works of Dylan Thomas (1914–53),
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), and William Shakespeare
(1564–1616) into German. He published the novel
Ein Soldat und ein Mädchen (A Soldier and a Girl,
1960) and wrote Kafkaesque short stories (see
Franz Kafka). His awards include the Schiller Prize
(1965) and the Bremen Literature Prize (1983).
Fried used terse language laced with aphorisms
and epigrams to address contemporary issues and
events, such as the Vietnam War. National back-
ground had little influence on his opinions. Stuart
Hood, who translated many of his works into
English, stated in an interview, “Fried did not have
a problem with nationality. He did not want to be
British, German, or Jewish.” Fried’s positions were
thus often paradoxical: He was a German language
writer who criticized the policies of West Germany,
a Jew who opposed Israel’s fight against the Pales-
tinians, and a leftist who was critical of Marxist
practice.
Another Work by Erich Fried
Children and Fools. Translated by Martin Chalmers.
London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992.
A Work about Erich Fried
Lawie, Steven W. Erich Fried: A Writer Without a
Country. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.
Frisch, Max (1911–1991) playwright, novelist
Max Frisch was born in Zurich, Switzerland, to
Franz and Lina Wildermuth Frisch. He wrote sev-
eral unpublished plays as a teenager and studied
German literature at the University of Zurich from
1930 to 1933. He then supported himself as a
freelance journalist and wrote his first novel,
Jürg Reinhart (1934). In 1936, Frisch decided to
pursue his father’s profession and enrolled in the
Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich
to study architecture. He received his degree and
opened an architectural firm in 1941. Frisch served
intermittently in the Swiss army during World War
II and married Gertrud Anna Constance in 1942.
Frisch established his reputation as a dramatist
soon after the war with a series of plays that cap-
tured the mood of the time. Staying neutral during
the cold war, Frisch remained in contact with the
literary worlds on both sides of the iron curtain.
East German writer Bertolt
BRECHT became one of
Frisch, Max 153
his most important influences. Frisch traveled ex-
tensively throughout his life and gained a reputa-
tion as a notable diarist. His novels and plays made
him one of the most respected German language
writers. The novel I’m Not Stiller (1954) deals with
the issue of individual freedom and displays the
experimental narrative prose that made him fa-
mous. His novel Homo Faber (1957) is a commen-
tary on the uncontrollable nature of technology.
Frisch’s later works, such as Montauk (1975), re-
flect a concern with aging and death. He won nu-
merous American, Swiss, and German literary
awards, including the Georg Büchner Prize.
Frisch was an original writer with integrity and
a concern for truth and relevance. He continually
used new contexts to address his common themes:
male-female relationships, reality and imagina-
tion, social responsibility, and the quest for self-
fulfillment. Frisch also had a piercing insight into
contemporary life. German literary scholar Wulf
Koepke wrote that Frisch’s works “exemplify the
struggle for survival of the human individual in
the face of a society blindly intent on its own ex-
tinction.”
Another Work by Max Frisch
Sketchbook 1946–1949. Translated by Geoffrey Skel-
ton. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
A Work about Max Frisch
Koepke, Wulf. Understanding Max Frisch. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
Fuentes, Carlos (1928– ) novelist, short-
story writer, dramatist, essayist
Carlos Fuentes was born in Panama City, Panama,
where his father, Rafael Fuentes Boettiger, was the
Mexican ambassador. Being the son of a career
diplomat, Fuentes spent his childhood moving
from city to city, following his father’s assign-
ments. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he be-
came acutely aware of his Mexican nationality, in
part because of being ostracized and harassed by
his schoolmates.
Fuentes received an excellent and international
education and is fluent in Spanish, English, and
French. At first, it seemed that he would follow his
father into the world of diplomacy. He returned to
Mexico City to attend law school, but after gradu-
ating, he began to dedicate more and more of his
time to literary pursuits. His early exposure to the
inner workings of the Mexican government and
his studies of economics and law gave his later lit-
erature a keen political sense and an ability to de-
pict and criticize aspects of the Mexican upper
classes.
Though Fuentes began to write as early as the
1940s, it was not until the late 1950s that he be-
came well known. His second novel, The Death of
Artemio Cruz (1962), received a shocked and con-
fused reaction from its first critics, followed by an
almost immediate wave of praise for its ground-
breaking style and depth. The book’s stream-of-
consciousness style evokes the last thoughts
of a powerful capitalist, Artemio Cruz, on his
deathbed. The book is written in first-person,
second-person, and third-person sections that rep-
resent the different points of view that Cruz has
on his own life.
The use of the fragmented and musical lan-
guage associated with stream-of-consciousness
writing as well as the use of multiple points of view
indicate a clear influence by James JOYCE, Virginia
WOOLF, and particularly William Faulkner. The
book also is clearly structured on Orson Welles’s
film Citizen Kane, which Fuentes saw in New York
at an early age.
Another of Fuentes’s novels, Terra Nostra
(1975), pushes the envelope of a novel’s experi-
mental possibilities even further. It is, essentially, a
meditation on Spanish and Latin-American his-
tory that uses fiction as its medium. It has no co-
hesive plot of which to speak and ranges from
ancient Rome to the imagined end of the world.
The main characters are barely human; they are,
in fact, allegorical representations of the primal
forces that drive human history.
Fuentes has also written a large number of es-
says. La Nueva Novela Hispanoamericana (The
154 Fuentes, Carlos
New Hispanic-American Novel, 1969), a study of
the “new” Latin American novel of the 1960s, is a
profound account of what distinguishes the nov-
els of the cultural boom that occurred in Latin
America at that time. It delves into the significance
of the new style of MAGIC REALISM and thoughtfully
examines the strengths and tendencies of what
was, at the time, a newly emerging force in world
literature.
Along with Octavio PAZ, Fuentes stands as one
of the foremost Mexican authors of the 20th cen-
tury. His erudition and refined intelligence, com-
bined with the gifts of an epic storyteller, earned
him in 1987 the Cervantes Prize, the most presti-
gious award given to a Spanish language author.
Other Works by Carlos Fuentes
The Crystal Frontier: A Novel in Nine Stories. Trans-
lated by Alfred MacAdam. New York: Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 1997.
The Hydra Head. Translated by Margaret Sayers
Peden. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1978.
A Work about Carlos Fuentes
Williams, Raymond Leslie. The Writings of Carlos
Fuentes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
futurism
Having its origins in literature and poetry, the fu-
turist movement began in Europe on February
20, 1909, when the front page of the French news-
paper Le Figaro published the Founding and Man-
ifesto of Futurism by artist and lawyer Emilio
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Marinetti’s mani-
festo glorified technology, particularly the speed
and power of the newly developed automobile,
while at the same time promoting violence and
aggression and calling for the destruction of tra-
ditional culture. This wide-scale obliteration of
the past, according to Marinetti, was to also in-
clude the physical demolition of cultural institu-
tions that were linked to traditional society, such
as museums and libraries. Marinetti referred to
these institutions as “those cemeteries of wasted
efforts, those calvaries of crucified dreams, those
catalogues of broken impulses!” He also encour-
aged his followers to “Let the good incendiaries
come with their carbonized fingers! ...Here they
are! Here they are!...Set the library stacks on
fire! Turn the canals in their course to flood the
museum vaults!” (The Futurist Cookbook) At the
time of the publication, Marinetti was the only
member of the movement, but he soon gained a
large literary and artistic following.
The name futurism was coined by Marinetti as a
celebration of the change and growth of the future.
Futurism stood in contrast to the sentimentality
inherent in
ROMANTICISM. Futurists openly and in-
tentionally defied tradition and constantly ques-
tioned the accepted concepts of art and even the
standard definitions of what constitutes art. They
embraced technology, particularly anything relat-
ing to speed or power, and glorified the energy and
violent nature of 20th-century urban life. The
power of machinery and a fascination with speed
were focal points of the movement, as was the re-
nunciation of the “static” art of previous genera-
tions. Futurist literary theory, for example, focused
on the ability of language to express. A futurist
poet, for example, might frame words so that they
would project from the page like gunfire.
Although it began as an Italian movement, fu-
turism quickly spread throughout the world dur-
ing the early part of the 20th century to places such
as Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine, Holland, Portu-
gal, and America. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
other Eastern bloc countries, futurism was
adopted quickly as a movement of protest against
established cultural values and political hierarchy.
Futurism not only promoted destruction of
cultural institutions; it also glorified war. It favored
fascism and aimed to destroy artistic tradition. The
motivation behind futurism was largely political.
Marinetti and many other futurists were heavily
involved in demonstrations urging Italy to enter
World War I.
Futurism was also characterized by the numer-
ous manifestos written and published simply for
the purpose of explaining the movement itself.
futurism 155
These documents took the form of pamphlets and
illustrated books of poetry. The rules of futurism
as it applied to the arts were defined in these man-
ifestos long before they were actually seen in the
arts themselves. The tone of Marinetti’s initial
manifesto and many others that followed was in-
tentionally inflammatory and, like the movement
itself, designed to inspire anger, arouse contro-
versy, and attract attention.
One of the reasons that Italian futurism is not
better known today is its relationship to fascism.
After World War II, futurism was viewed in a neg-
ative light because of this association; however, al-
though Marinetti was a friend of the young fascist
Benito Mussolini and both were ardent supporter
of fascism, Futurism was never, as it has sometimes
been claimed, “the official art of fascism.” Mus-
solini was politically active in promoting the futur-
ists, especially during the years 1918 to 1920. He
ultimately turned against them, using his political
clout to silence them. Many futurists then became
disillusioned by the political situation and drifted
away from political activism.
Futurism officially ended in 1944 with the fall
of Italy and Marinetti’s death; however, the legacy
of futurism to modern art, including literature, is
enormous. Futurism was the first attempt to focus
art on technology and machines. Remnants of fu-
turism can be found throughout 20th-century
avant-garde art, particularly with regard to many
aspects of modern science fiction.
Works about Futurism
Marinetti, F. T. The Futurist Cookbook. Translated by
Suzanne Brill, edited and introduction by Lesley
Chamberlain. San Francisco: Bedford Arts, 1989.
Tisdall, Caroline, and Angela Bozolla. Futurism. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
156 futurism
157
G
Gabo
See GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, GABRIEL.
Gandhi, Mohandas K(aramchand)
(1869–1948) writer, political leader
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in
Kathiawar, Gujarat, India. He was the youngest son
of Karamchand Gandhi, a politician, and Putlibai
Gandhi. His mother was an extremely devout
Hindu, and Gandhi often said his own beliefs on
pacifism were based on his mother’s religious
teachings. In 1883, at age 13, Gandhi was wedded
to Kasturba. Five years later, he was sent to England
to study law and, in 1891, was called to the bar but
decided to return to India.
After a brief period at work as a lawyer for the
Bombay High Court in 1893, Gandhi went to
South Africa to work for a Muslim law firm and
spent the next 20 years fighting against the mal-
treatment of South African Indians, a fight that led
to the formation in 1894 of the Natal Indian Con-
gress. He later wrote about his experiences in
South Africa in Satyagraha in South Africa (1924).
In this work, Gandhi describes the idea behind
Satyagraha (Truth Force), which later became the
Satyagraha movement. This movement was a form
of “peaceful resistance”against British colonial rule
and was the most powerful political tool in India’s
struggle for independence.
By the time he was 45, Gandhi had become an
international figure. His wide-ranging influence
and prodigious social work gave him the title of
“Bapu” (Father) in India and “Mahatma” (Great
Soul) all over the world. His teachings on the im-
portance of combining spiritual healing with po-
litical struggle have been adopted by international
leaders such as America’s Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X. These ideas are passionately and can-
didly expressed in his autobiography, An Autobi-
ography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth
(1929). His experiments with truth, he explains,
are a lifelong commitment to achieve purity in
mind and action. For Gandhi, however, purity also
had political power. His political career was dedi-
cated to encouraging Indians to be nonviolent in
their struggle against the violent and oppressive
power of the British.
Gandhi’s most important contribution to In-
dian history was his leadership in helping India and
Pakistan gain independence from British colonial
rule in 1947. His political legacy often overshad-
ows his literary talent, but he wrote prodigiously in
both English and Gujarati (his mother tongue).
Gandhi wrote numerous essays on topics ranging
from vegetarianism to anticasteism to passive dis-