Abstract
<jats:p>The article examines formation and evolution of the “literature of green hell”. The emergence of the mythologems of “paradise” and “hell” of Latin American nature in literary monuments of the 16th century, “paradise” and “infernal” metaphors in travelogues of the 18th and 19th centuries are considered. The genesis of the “literature of green hell” is associated with the essays of E. da Cunha: his preface to the collection of stories “Green Hell” by A. Rangel led to the emergence of an original image of the tropical forest, which became the foundation for the artistic understanding of the relationship between humans and the jungle. The article analyzes in detail the artistic features of the novel “Selva” by J.M. Ferreira de Castro, and traces the typological similarity with the classic work of the “literature of green hell”, i. e. “The Abyss” by J.E. Rivera. The key features of the image of the selva in the literature about the “curse” of the tropical forest are revealed: independence and self-sufficiency, functioning as a living organism, the desire for death / rebirth in the cycle of life and death. It is noted that, “testifying” and denouncing the social evil of predation and tyranny on plantations, the prose about the selva of the studied period does not avoid important philosophical questions. Reflections on the hostility or indifference of telluric forces in the prose of O. Quiroga of the 1910s remain relevant in the “literature of green hell” of the 1920–1930s. The movement from prose, including in its artistic formula “terrible” and “miraculous”, to the concept of “miraculous reality” of A. Carpentier in the 1940s is traced.</jats:p>