Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra and the Kabbalah: The Recreation of the Hispanic World

Rather than treating the Jewish Kabbalah as merely one heretical doctrine among others in Fuente’s novel Tera nostra , Penn (Spanish, U. of Leicester) argues that examining its presence is vital for understanding both the theme and style. He draws on 20th-century scholarship showing links between Jewish mysticism and theories of history and textuality, and literary implementations of the Kabbalah by writers who significantly influenced Fuentes such as Alego Carpentier and Jorge Luis Borges. His discusses the Kabbalistic concept of language and its operation in the novel, Celestina as metaphysical woman, Kabbalistic time, and a novelistic historiography. The text is double spaced. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)