Chapter 2: “The regional novel and beyond” – Brian Gollnick
Comps people
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Rómulo
Gallegos, Doña Bárbara (Pg. 45-46)
-
Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento, Facundo (Pg. 45)
-
Ricardo
Güiraldes, Don Segundo Sombra (Pg.
46)
-
José
Eustasio Rivera, La vorágine (Pg. 46-47)
-
María Luisa Bombal (Pg. 49-50)
-
Mariano
Azuela – Los de abajo (Pg. 50-52)
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Jorge
Icaza – Huasipungo (Pg. 55)
-
José
María Arguedas – Los ríos profundos
(Pg. 55-56)
-
Rosario
Castellanos, Balún-Canán (Pg. 56)
General notes
-
Beginning in the last third of the nineteenth
century, Latin America experienced economic expansion and relative political
stability (44)
-
Many regionalist novels in early twentieth
century (44)
-
Novelas de
la tierra / telluric novels – describe
local realities through nature, rural life, and cultural traits understood as
peculiar to Latin America (44)
-
Regionalist novels – texts written during the
first three or four decades of the twentieth century with a direct concern for
the relationship between local and national structures (44-45)
o
In some (the canonical regional novels),
national project appears as a process of domination leading towards homogenization,
often allegorized through the landscape and rural life
o
In others, more ambiguous relations between
emerging social subjects and the nation
-
Rómulo Gallegos, Doña Bárbara (1929)
o
“The archetype of the canonical novel of the
land” (45)
o
Gallegos was Venezuelan, life: 1884-1969 (45)
o
Influence of realism (45)
o
Narrates the conflict between two characters who
allegorize possibilities for national development (45)
§
Villain, whose name literally refers to
barbarity
§
Male counterpart, Santos Luzardo (name: “saints,
light”)
o
Similar in conflictive formula to Sarmiento’s
essay Facundo (45)
o
Use of model of “foundational fiction” – plot which
resolves social conflicts symbolically through romance (45)
§ Santos Luzardo marries Doña Bárbara’s
renegade daughter
o
Some plot summary – pg. 45
o
Use of direct, third-person realism (46)
§
Omniscient perspective
§
Linguistic hierarchy between characters’ rural dialects
and narrator’s “standard” Spanish
o
Orality (example: Pajarote, the storyteller)
o
Novel is a depiction of a successful domination
of nature (46)
o
Presentation of nation-state as a presence felt
primarily through domination; this process is allegorized as the control of
nature (47)
o
Persistent influence of 19th century national
romance (49)
-
Ricardo Güiraldes, Don Segundo Sombra (1926)
o
Güiraldes
– Argentina, life: 1886-1927 (46)
§
He lived most of his adult years in Paris, but
this novel returns to his youth on his family’s ranch
o
The hero of his text was a popular Argentine
gaucho, who bestows folk wisdom on a male apprentice from the city while
spinning a nostalgic vision of the Pampas around Buenos Aires (46)
o
Depicts an idealized rural life prior to the
influx of immigrants in the late 19th century and the modernization
of agriculture; nostalgic perspective (46)
o
Nostalgia and idealization create a new Argentine
identity that fuses idealized rural values and modern urban culture
o
Novel is a celebration of rural life (46)
-
José Eustasio Rivera, La vorágine
(1924)
o
Best-known regional novel set in the jungle (46)
o
Rivera – Columbia, life: 1888-1928 (46)
o
Most experimental telluric novel (46)
o
Use of a first-person narrator, Arturo Cova, to
tell his own story as a dissolute socialite who feels Bogotá with his lover and
ersatz muse, Alicia (46)
o
Novel presents a dramatic condemnation of
chaotic development in the region between Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil (46)
o
Jungle as a no man’s land inhabited by a
rapacious cast of international figures intent on getting rich and leaving (47)
o
Lack of social controls – suggestion of absence
of nation as a political entity capable of defining and managing its interior
spaces; no state has sovereignty at end of novel, and the jungle territory is a
wild semi-independent zone (47)
o
Cova is an unreliable narrator (47)
o
Efforts to channel nature’s power seem a thin façade
for violence and self-gratification (47)
o
The reader has to question whether Cova’s cause
is just or not (47)
o
Novel exemplifies a growing awareness that far
from the promise of abundance and prosperity, the region’s natural resources
represented a great weakness for societies that lacked strong nation-states to
counter foreign interests (47)
o
Presentation of nation-state as a presence felt
primarily through domination; this process is allegorized as the control of
nature (47)
o
Central theme of gender relations (49)
-
María Luisa Bombal
o
Bombal – Chile, life: 1910-1980 (49)
§
Born into privilege
§
Close friend of Pablo Neruda (50)
o
Work moves into subjective and fantastic
narratives (49)
o
Style influenced by post-modernista poetry (50)
o
Depictions of feminine subjectivity – strong critique
of domestic abuse, abortion, and women’s subordination (50)
o
Expresses feminine sexuality well outside the
accepted terrain of marriage and maternity (50)
-
Mariano Azuela, Los de abajo (1915)
o
Azuela
– Mexican, life: 1873-1952 (50)
§ Small-town doctor
§
Supporter of Madero during Mexican revolution
§
Exile in Texas
o
His novel, LDA,
could be seen as a separate starting point for the regional novel (50)
o
This novel was a turning point in Latin American
narrative (50)
o
This novel was lost in the tumult of the
revolution for many years, but was rediscovered and rapidly canonized by
critics in the mid 1920’s (50)
o
Azuela depicts lower-class protagonists with
realism and sympathy (51)
o
Novel’s trajectory follows an inverse arch: “the
more Demetrio strays from home and the higher he rises in the rebel army, the
more he loses his morality and the more his understanding of the revolution fails”
(51)
o
Message that the lower classes could not
comprehend the political changes that they themselves helped to initiate – the common
people cannot govern themselves (51)
o
Novel continues to show the influence of earlier
narrative forms, particularly naturalism
§
Tendency to tie moral and social development to
environmental factors
o
Orality/dialogue
§
Extensive use of dialogue in this novel is relatively
new (51)
·
Reduces narrator’s interventions to telegraphic
descriptions
·
Story’s driving force seems to come from
characters themselves rather than heavy-handed omniscient narrator
§
Sense of having faithfully captured the
revolution and its protagonist due to use of regional and class-specific
dialects
§
Use of orality lends credibility to narrative
o
Protagonists’ political and social ambitions are
limited through a national perspective of the revolution, rather than a
regional one [comparison with Campobello’s Cartucho]
(52)
-
Indigenista fiction treats Latin America’s
native populations, but it often recreates the paternalism and racial
hierarchies which it seeks to question (55)
-
Jorge Icaza, Huasipungo (1943)
o
This was Icaza’s best-known novel (55)
o
Icaza – Ecuador; life: 1906-1978 (55)
o
Scathing condemnation of Ecuador’s insertion
into the global economy and the brutal exploitation of indigenous workers (55)
o
Native protagonists are so thoroughly crushed
under the dominant economic system that they seem incapable of taking effective
action on their own behalf (55)
o
Native characters are infantilized and
animalized; their speech is reduced to primitive enunciations and the result
makes indigenous cultures appear deficient in analytical categories and
historical perspective (55)
-
José María Arguedas
o
Argueas – Peru; life: 1911-1969
§
Great indigenista writer of the mid-20th
century (55)
§
Raised bilingually in Quechua and Spanish
o
Rather than using European innovations to depict
Latin American culture, he altered the esthetic systems of the dominant
literature according to linguistic and social codes drawn from Quechua-speaking
Peruvians (55)
o
Los ríos profundos (1958)
§
Semi-autobiographical work (55)
§
Tells the story of a bilingual narrator who
resists assimilation into the dominant society of his boarding school (55)
§
Quechua-influenced perspective on social
relations through deeply contextualized moral codes (55)
§
Includes problematic treatments of gender (56)
-
Rosario Castellanos,
Balún-Canán (1957)
o
Castellanos – Mexico; life: 1925-1974 (56)
§
Latin America’s most important woman author of
indigenista fiction
o
Her novel centers on gender categories as
markers for regional and native identities (56)
o
Work focuses on a land-owning family whose
social standing is eroded by reforms from the national government. (56)
o
“History is allegorized by incapacity of family
to sustain its patriarchal line. When her sickly brother dies, the novel’s
protagonist, a young girl, becomes the sole heir, threatening the continuation
of the family name. That crisis produces a sense of stagnation, and the
indigenous peasants’ face-off with the girl’s father in a conflict that ultimately
drains both sides. Caught in the middle, Castellanos’s young narrator portrays
how powerful forces of socialization, particularly the Church, break the girl’s
identification with the local Maya culture in order to mold her according to
dominant models of feminine subjectivity.” (56)
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