The Elusive Promise of El Dorado in the Latin American Literary Imagination
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Abstract
This comparative literary study examines the engagement of contemporary South American writers with the myth of the lost city of gold, known as Manoa or El Dorado. The essay briefly shows how El Dorado became a foundational myth of the South American continent and then illustrates how the “promise of El Dorado” is debunked by literary works published between 1950 and 2008. The authors considered here contrast the colonial depiction of Amazonia as an elusive place of happiness and wealth with the present deforestation of the region and the deracination of its peoples. Each writer employs a tone of ironic, melancholic nostalgia for the mirage of El Dorado to invalidate the myth of Amazonia as a pristine site of riches. In creating an aesthetics of bereavement, the writers offer up a new kind of literature about the Amazon that erodes the master narratives about the region and interrogates the viability of the El Dorado myth in the contemporary era.
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