Category Archives: Reference

“(1875-1961) Argentine novelist. Larreta was a romantic who wrote with great technical precision. He recreated the Spain of Philip II in La Gloria de don Ramiro (1908; tr The Glory of Don Ramiro, 1924). His dark and lyrical stories are remarkable for images which assault the reader’s senses with colors, sounds, and smells. Other well-known works are two gaucho novels, Zogoibi (1926) and En la pampas (1955), and El Gerardo (1956), a two-part novel set in the Alhambra and Argentina, respectively, shortly after the Spanish civil war.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

the name of which I won’t try to recall, there lived, not long ago, one of those gentlemen, who usually keep a lance upon a rack, an old shield, a lean horse, and a greyhound for coursing.”

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Don Quixote pt I ch. I (1605)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

“(1884-1963) Chilean novelist and short-story writer. After wandering throughout Latin America and working at a variety of jobs, Barrios settled in Santiago, where he served in the 1920s as minister of education and director of the national library. His mastery of the psychological tale is especially evident in his portrayal of hypersensitive personalities. Such is the ten-year-old protagonist of the novelette El nino que enloquecio de amor (1915), who falls in love with one of his mother’s friends. The hero of Un perdido (1917) is an overwrought weakling who, unable to cope with reality, finds refuge in alcohol. Barrios’s best work is probably El hermano asno (1922; tr Brother Ass, 1942), which deals with the inner conflicts of Brother Lazaro and Brother Rufino, two Franciscan monks. Gran senor y rajadiablos (1948) follows Jose Pedro Valverde, one of literature’s most strongly drawn characters, through a life centered mostly on a large fundo (ranch). Barrios’s last novel, Los hombres del hombre (1950), is a lyrical story of sexual jealousy and insecurity in family life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.