Description:
Argues for Ocampo’s multifaceted development of ambiguity in various media and genres on the levels of language, plot and gender.

The critical essays in this volume are dedicated to the works of Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) and introduce readers more fully to a figure who has long been a kind of insider’s secret among intellectuals of her country. As the title suggests, the purpose of the volume is to move beyond the codification of Ocampo’s use of the supernatural, an early oversimplification of her work. The essays address the quirkiness, cruelty, violence, and overtsexuality of her works, elements which have impeded a full understanding of her creative vision. Here it becomes clear that Silvina Ocampo was a co-contributor to the literary enterprise of the Sur generation, which produced Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Victoria Ocampo, and had a profound influence on writers of the younger generation, such as Alejandra Pizarnik, Sylvia Molloy, Marjorie Agosín and others.


CONTENTS:

Introduction: Reading Silvina Ocampo - Patricia N. Klingenberg

Silvina Ocampo for the Twenty-First Century: A Review of Recent Criticism - Patricia N. Klingenberg

Rereading Autobiografía de Irene: Writing and Its Double in the Narrative of Silvina Ocampo - Andrea Ostrov

Sur in the 1960s: Toward a New Critical Sensibility - Judith Podlubne

Reading Cruelty in Silvina Ocampo’s Short Fiction: Theme, Style, and Narrative Resistance - Ashley Hope Perez

Eros and Its Archetypes in Silvina Ocampo’s Later Stories - Giulia Poggi

In Memory of Silvina Ocampo - Noemi Ulla

Classical Reference in Silvina Ocampo’s Poetry - Fiona J. Mackintosh

Silvina Ocampo and Translation - Maria Julia Rossi

The Gender-Bending Mother of ‘Santa Teodora’ - Fernanda Zullo-Ruiz

Illicit Domains: Homage to Silvina Ocampo in Alejandra Pizarnik’s Works - Daniel Balderston

Afterword: A Personal Reflection - Marjorie Agosin

Bibliography

Index