Approaches to Teaching García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

by María Elena de Valdés (Editor)

Critics have read One Hundred Years of Solitude as a cultural document, as a revolutionary narrative, and as a high point of early postmodernism. The novel is taught widely and in a variety of curricular contexts, from courses on civilization and Latin American literature to seminars on comparative literature and women’s studies. When treating the novel in North American classrooms, however, nearly all teachers must address similar issues―for example, Latin American history and magic realism. This volume in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series suggests different methods for presenting these issues to undergraduates.

The volume is divided into two parts. The first part, “Materials,” discusses works about the novel and its author, the historical background, ideological contexts, and literary interpretations. The second part, “Approaches,” contains twelve essays on teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude. One group of essays shows how the novel is presented in various courses, such as humanities or politics. A second group of essays features approaches using history, ideology, myth, Jungian psychology, analytic psychology, hermeneutics, narratology, and other perspectives. The novel readily supports this range of interpretations because it is, as the editors say, “above all, a magnificent story that holds readers spellbound.”

156 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1990