“Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City” examines baroque and postmodern narratives through the representation of urban life. This study argues that the baroque reflects the crisis posed by the encounter with the other in the new continent of America, while the postmodern is related to a crisis of knowledge. Selected narrative texts illustrate the main literary tendencies of these two periods and demonstrate similarities in the responses of literary characters to their urban settings. The sense of crisis is both a central literary theme and a response to the historical conditions of urban life during the two periods. Even though the concept of crisis appears to involve a unique experience, the parallels between the two periods suggest that the postmodern crisis is not unique. The social and cultural responses of literary characters to the sense of crisis are similar in both periods. Postmodern social conditions of urban existence are seen as repetitions of the patterns of the baroque. This observation emphasizes literary traditions; parallels and differences between baroque and postmodern texts attest to the idea that all literature revisits previous literary forms through the dynamics of intertextuality. Another focus is the value of the concept of mapping, as a literary theme and a personal practice. As a means for discovering of urban spaces and of defining the human subject mapping suggests that in times of crisis subjects produce parallel systems to control their circumstances. Lastly, this work discusses an experimental literature generated in response to urban disorder, in which disruption and chaos lead to new narrative forms. Ultimately, picaresque and postmodern narratives both respond to complex urban spaces through forms that innovate and integrate new cultural and literary elements.

“Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City” examines baroque and postmodern narratives through the representation of urban life. This study argues that the baroque reflects the crisis posed by the encounter with the other in the new continent of America, while the postmodern is related to a crisis of knowledge. Selected narrative texts illustrate the main literary tendencies of these two periods and demonstrate similarities in the responses of literary characters to their urban settings. The sense of crisis is both a central literary theme and a response to the historical conditions of urban life during the two periods. Even though the concept of crisis appears to involve a unique experience, the parallels between the two periods suggest that the postmodern crisis is not unique. The social and cultural responses of literary characters to the sense of crisis are similar in both periods. Postmodern social conditions of urban existence are seen as repetitions of the patterns of the baroque. This observation emphasizes literary traditions; parallels and differences between baroque and postmodern texts attest to the idea that all literature revisits previous literary forms through the dynamics of intertextuality. Another focus is the value of the concept of mapping, as a literary theme and a personal practice. As a means for discovering of urban spaces and of defining the human subject mapping suggests that in times of crisis subjects produce parallel systems to control their circumstances. Lastly, this work discusses an experimental literature generated in response to urban disorder, in which disruption and chaos lead to new narrative forms. Ultimately, picaresque and postmodern narratives both respond to complex urban spaces through forms that innovate and integrate new cultural and literary elements.