Cartografías cosmopolitas: León de Greiff y la tradición literaria

Marco Ramírez Rojas

Cartografías cosmopolitas: León de Greiff y la tradición literaria analyzes the poetic works of this 20th century Colombian writer as a manifestation of cosmopolitanism, global cultural cartographies, and a self-fashioned poetic genealogy. Ramírez Rojas approaches de Greiff’s poems as cultural maps that reveal both a desire of connectivity with the world and a need for reorganizing the imaginary library of world literature. From a self-assumed position of eccentricity, de Greiff builds a network of global connections and disputes the binary division of cultural centers and peripheries, revendicating marginality as a productive condition. The study of this alternative cosmopolitanism brings de Greiff’s writings into current debates about Latin America’s cultural positionality within the frame of global cultural networks and world literature.

"Cartografías cosmopolitas: León de Greiff y la tradición literaria is an ambitious, well-researched and well-written study that represents a significant (and overdue) contribution to the relatively scant body of criticism on León de Greiff’s poetry. De Greiff’s construction of a uniquely personal and enigmatic poetic universe is illuminated through skillful close readings and explorations of connections to far-flung communities and literary traditions. Among this monograph’s unique contributions are its convincing situation of De Greiff’s work both within modernismo and in dialogue with contemporary authors and critics in and beyond the Latin American context; its exploration of the poet’s “cartographies” through effective close analyses of themes and images; and its more detailed investigations of his relationships with Scandinavia, the “Orient” and an unlikely kindred spirit, François Villon. It is my hope that this groundbreaking text leads more scholars of literature to discover the work of one of Latin America’s greatest poets."

—Stacy Hoult-Saros, Valparaiso University

Marco Ramírez Rojas is an Associate Professor of Spanish at City University of New York, Lehman College. His research interest include Latin American cosmopolitanism and world literature, representations of politically inflicted fears in literature and cinema in the continent, and Latin American contemporary coming-of-age novels. His articles have been published in several academic journals in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. In collaboration with Olivia Moy, Ramírez Rojas published Julio y John, caminando y conversando (Lost and Found, 2019), the first translation of selected fragments of Imagen de John Keats, the literary biography written by Julio Cortázar about the Romantic British poet. Ramírez Rojas is coeditor of two volumes about sociopolitical fears in Latin America: Narrativas del miedo: Terror en obras literarias, cinemáticas y televisivas en Latinoamérica (Peter Lang, 2018) and Violencia, poder y afectos: Narrativas del miedo de Latinoamérica (Tamesis, 2022). He also edited a collection on the representation of children and minors in twentieth- and twenty-first-century cinema and literature: Growing Up in Latin America: Child and Youth Agency in Contemporary Popular Culture. Since 2019, he has been the head editor of the academic journal Ciberletras.

PSRL 87. Paper. $45.00. e-Book available. 

Page last updated on 9 January 2024.

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