Leyendas de Guatemala - Literary Analysis

Literary Analysis

Asturias bases his work on the traditions and legends of his ancestors and tries to provide an accurate representation of Native American culture, while mixing it with European colonial elements. He takes certain aspects of the traditional native culture “to demonstrate that the future of his country depends on the recognition and validation of the indigenous heritage”. His writing style is unique because he incorporates Western techniques with thematic and stylistic elements from indigenous literature, as well as combining oral and textual manners of narration. His uniqueness is further exemplified by the incapability to categorize his work in any one pre-existing genre of literature, although some claim Leyendas de Guatemala to be one of the pre-cursors of the magical realism genre.