Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book. The book discusses portrayals of the formulation of gendered selfhood in female Spanish American development novels and demands engagement with questions of gender and genre epitomized by the dilemma of Cristina Peri Rossi's character Morris in La nave de los locos. The Bildungsroman is a subgenre of the novel devoted to narrating the development of the individual in dialogue with Cristina Peri Rossi's social context, the process of Bildung, accounting for the mutually informative relationship between individuality and community; selfhood and society. The Bildungsroman exemplifies perhaps more than any other literary form the gendering of genre and the potential consequences of this beyond the realm of the text. Overall, the view of the Bildung of gender permitted by the critical explorations offered in the book is a panoramic one that accounts for issues specific to the national, historical and political contexts portrayed.