This is the first monograph in English on Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay 1878-Argentina 1936), a canonical author whose works are read by all advanced students of Spanish in the US and many other countries. The study examines Quiroga s work through the theoretical lens of the heroic a lens elaborated in part by means of Quiroga s own disquisitions on the subject and the complementary phenomenon of the monstrous. This lens serves to elucidate many evidently obscure and self-contradictory aspects of Quiroga s work and its relation to the context in which he lived. That context included the neo-colonial social and economic milieu of Argentina s fast-changing, immigrant-charged, increasingly materialistic society; the growing influence of foreign cultural discourses, particularly Hollywood film; the conflict between the genders in a society that embraced modernity but resisted changes in gender roles; the weight of new scientific discourses, especially Darwinian evolution, in social and political thought; and the impact on pedagogical theory and practice of these multiple changing discourses. This study discloses the extraordinary range of Quiroga s work, which includes erotic romance, science fiction and fantasy, psychological occult, social satire, a great variety of juvenile literature, outdoor adventure and most familiar to readers in the United States gothic and naturalist horror. The book concludes that Quiroga s consistent imperative of the heroic is essential to reconciling these various, evidently incompatible aspects of Quiroga s poetics, revealing its theoretical and ethical coherence.
