This essay engages two questions: first, it is a response to current attempts to make sense of various literary traditions in an era associated with postmodernity and globalization. I argue for a global but period-specific approach to the study of lit . . .

In 1949, while living in Paris, Mexican poet-essayist Octavio Paz wrote his first major work, The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), a hermeneutical text of self-examination based on observing the everyday phenomena of Mexican life while in search of “the . . .