Department of English

Often recognized as Gabriel Garcia Márquez's masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is a foundational work of not only Latin American literature but of the contemporary literary canon. The novel played a primary role in popularizing the magical realist genre, earning Márquez global renown and contributing to his 1982 Nobel Prize win, making him the first Colombian to win the award.

To what do we attribute One Hundred Years of Solitude’s lasting popularity? What can Márquez’s story of the Buendía family – living, surviving, and rarely thriving – in the Latin American microcosm of Macondo tell us about memory, social reproduction, and time? How might a novel set in early 19th and 20th century Colombia reach across national and temporal boundaries to remain relevant to our contemporary moment? This course looks to answer these questions, as well as explore the novel’s treatment of subjective reality, the blurred demarcations between life and death, and the magical. To do so, we will spend time reading Márquez’s contemporaries and literary influences, as well as scholarship on mythology, the marvelous, and magical realism as a genre. This course will additionally turn to the recent One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024) television series, and consider how the adaptation works to convey elements of the novel’s plot and major themes. Assignments will include critical papers and creative writing projects.