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Spanish Professor Patricia Reagan |
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7/11/12
Randolph-Macon College
Spanish Professor Patricia Reagan is the author of
The Postmodern Storyteller: Donoso, Garcia Marquez, and Vargas Llosa (Lexington Books, 2012).
The Postmodern Storyteller examines three key Latin American novels of the 1980s: José Donoso’s
El jardín de al lado (The Garden Next Door), Gabriel García Márquez’s
Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) and Mario Vargas Llosa’s
El hablador (The Storyteller).
As Reagan acknowledges, each author investigated in her study became popular during the “Boom” of Latin American literature in the 1960s, when the world first began to widely read authors of the region.
Reagan reveals that these authors are not typically classified as postmodern, yet, as her study demonstrates, each author adopts a first-person observing narrator who becomes postmodern in his storytelling technique. Each storyteller not only rejects the notion of communicating truth by parodying the realist, chronicle and ethnography genres but also requires an active reader-accomplice who will formulate an individualized message to assuage the fragmentation of the individual in a postmodern society.
“I became interested in this project because after the ‘Boom’ of the 1960s, critics really struggled to classify and categorize the vast body of literature of Latin America,” says Reagan. “In answer to this struggle, my book identifies a narrative pattern that not only connects major Latin America authors but also is an exploration of the postmodern reader’s search for identity.”
The Postmodern Storyteller reveals that the act of reading can have a psychotherapeutic appeal for the active reader.
Reagan’s primary field of study is contemporary Latin American literature with secondary concentrations in nineteenth-century Latin American literature and contemporary peninsular literature. She has published articles on Julio Cortázar’s
El perseguidor (The Pursuer) and Juan José Millás’
Dos mujeres en Praga (Two Women in Prague).
In addition, Reagan has contributed articles to forthcoming books including a piece on
bachata, a genre of music from the Dominican Republic, to be included in
Sounds of Resistance: The Role of Music in Multicultural Activism, and an article on Jorge Luís Borges’
Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote (Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote). She is also a contributing editor to
The Encyclopedia of Latin Music and
Celebrating Latino Folklore, both forthcoming.
Reagan joined the R-MC faculty in 2008. She earned her B.A. from Hood College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.