About

Welcome to Jungle Books

Why does Tarzan continue to fascinate even as fear of the “savage” and scorn for the “uncivilized” grow? Continue reading in these pages and you will come to realize exactly how complex, and also how interesting this question is.

This is the site for Leslie Bary’s course “Jungle Books” at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. If you click on the tabs at the top of this page, you will see the course reading list, syllabus, video list, and list of secondary sources. These pages will expand as more material is added, so visit often. During the semester we will comment in this space on primary and secondary readings, assignments, and class discussion. Anyone in the course can post an entry, and anyone can comment on any entry. If you have questions please contact Leslie Bary at lbary@louisiana.edu.

The Course

We are studying narratives of voyages to and from jungles – stories which engage the apparent dichotomies of barbarism and “civilization,” primitive and modern, margin and center. Why it is that the jungle trope is so salient in modern Latin American literature, and how the Latin American texts interact with their European counterparts – also obsessed with jungles – is our main inquiry.

This course can be taken as a Spanish, Honors, or Humanities course. The workload involves active participation in class discussion, a journal, an oral presentation or two, and two papers or a take-home midterm and final. Lecture and discussion will be in English. Students may do readings in English or in the original, and may write papers in any language I can read. Spanish majors and minors must complete reading and writing assignments in Spanish.

Some Primary Texts

M. de Andrade, Macunaíma.
Blank, L. Burden of Dreams.
Carpentier A., Los pasos perdidos / The Lost Steps.
Conrad, J., Heart of Darkness.
Kipling, R., The Jungle Book.
Rivera, J. E., La Vorágine / The Vortex.
Sarmiento, D. F., Facundo, or, Civilization and Barbarism.
Vargas Llosa, M., La casa verde / The Green House.
Voltaire, F., Candide.

Some secondary readings and films (to be used for research, as background, and/or as material for oral presentations):

Williams, R. The Country and the City
Torgovnick, M. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives
Said, E. Orientalism
Price, S. Primitive Art in Civilized Places

Macunaíma
La muralla verde
Fitzcarraldo
Apocalypse Now

There is more detailed information on readings, film, and other resources in the tabs across the top of this page, as well as a syllabus for the current or most recent version of the course.