“Chapter 8: The Central American novel” – Roy C. Boland Osegueda
Comps people mentioned:
-
Ruben Darío (pg. 163)
-
Miguel
Angel Asturias, El señor presidente
(pg. 169)
-
Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú (pg. 172)
General notes:
-
Central American novel paralleled developments
in the rest of Latin America, although it usually lagged behind in the latest styles
and techniques (162)
-
Ruben Darío (163)
o
Nicaragua
o
Modernismo – poetry, but not much work in novels
-
Various literary trends after modernismo (165)
o
Costumbrismo =
relating to the folkloric representation of customs and manners
o
Antiimperialismo =
attacking US hegemonic ambitions
o
Criollismo =
focusing on various aspects of national and/or regional reality
§
Attempted to capture
the essential spirit and nature of the region (168)
o
Indigenismo =
defending Indian rights and culture
-
Harsh, overtly political outlook of many Central
American novelists (166)
-
Criollismo
o
Attempted to capture the essential spirit and
nature of the region (168)
o
Central preoccupation was the conflict between
civilization and barbarism as embodied in the opposition between tradition and
modernity, rural values and metropolitan mores (168)
o
Nature portrayed as a primeval force that
dominates the lives of the protagonists
-
Miguel Angel Asturias, El señor
presidente (1946) (169)
o
Urban setting, set in an archetypal city
o
Denunciation of the dicatorship of General
Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala (from 1898 to 1920)
o
Call to arms against the dehumanizing militarism
that had thrown a pall over Central America since independence
o
“anticipates
‘magical realism’ in the way it fuses fantasy and reality to project a
totalizing vision”
o
Reinforces Central America’s mestizo identity –
Western and Amerindian, Christian and pagan
-
Role of indigenous culture in forming a Central
American identity was crucial in first half of the twentieth century (169)
-
“A mode of non-fictional, documentary narrative
known as testimonio characterized the last
half of the twentieth century, particularly in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El
Salvador, the three republics that endured the immediate traumas of revolution,
post-revolution, or civil war” (171)
-
“The principal feature of testimonial writing is that the narrators are also participants who feel an
urgent need to ‘bear witness’ to their time and place and history” (171-172)
-
Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú, y
así me nació la conciencia (1938) (172)
o
The “classic” of the testimonial genre
o
Possibility that it fictionalizes personal and
historical truths in order to dramatize its political message
-
“Testimonial fiction”
tends to privilege the voices of the subaltern (gah, Spivak flashback!)
(172)
-
“The question of identity has been a major concern
in Costa Rica, where women novelists continue to figure prominently” (177)
-
“The most recent development in the Central
American novel has been the product of new diaspora: the massive emigration to
the USA from a region convulsed by poverty, oppression, and war” (178)
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