Typology and the Promised Land in Twentieth-century Inter-American Literature and Film

This study addresses the role of typology in twentieth-century works of literature and film from the Americas, in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese, that deal with the meaning of America and of American history. Existing scholarship has focused on typological thought in colonial Latin America and Puritan New England, but rarely on other periods. This project, however, explores religious and secular concepts of America by examining how twentieth-century works employ imagery, structures, and themes that can be read as typological. The works analyzed in this study have been selected based on their contributions to the larger conversation about the typologically derived concept of the Americas as a providential New World. Many of the works foreground typological representations of a new covenant between God and America; some employ types in hybridized forms that can be read through the lens of typology as tools to resist oppression.