Early Spanish American narrative

Introduction and background : the framework of this study ; Research into Native American writing systems and narrative

Narrative accounts of the encounter and conquest

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries : literary life in the Colonies

The struggle for nationhood and the rise of fiction

The mid-nineteenth century : romanticism, realism, and nationalism

Late-nineteenth-century narratives of social commentary and national self-reflection

Naturalism and modernismo

Conclusion : then and now.