Hubbell has an M.Litt. from the University of Aberdeen and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. In the following essay, he discusses the ways in which Aphrodite, far from being a lightweight pillow book, fits in with late-twentieth-century postmodernist texts.

Postmodernism, has been variously defined. Certainly, postmodernism takes the form of montage, the weaving together of information segments to create new narrative identities. For some it is the cultural logic implicit in late capitalism. Others see postmodernism as the condition which results from information floods and information economies. John Barth, in his "The Literature of Replenishment," thinks of postmodernism as a style of literature that replenishes. Each of these definitions can be applied to Allende.

According to some critics of modern Latin American literature, Allende's work belongs to the recently established category of female-written, personal...