Chapter 3: Literature and American Experience
Comps writers mentioned
-
Sarmineto – Facundo
(pg. 74)
-
José
Hernández – Martín Fierro (pg. 77-82)
-
Jorge
Isaacs – María (pg. 88-89)
General Notes
Introduction
-
European Romanticism – idea of originality and
literature, inspiration in nature (74)
-
Spanish Americans wanted to be original but
struggled to find the right form (74)
The Gauchesque
-
Sarmiento – Facundo (74)
-
Life on the estancia
had given rise to its own folklore and legend; hero
of legend was the “gaucho malo,” the outlaw famous for feats of daring
(75)
-
Song contests – duels of improvisation (75)
-
Urban gauchesque poetry (75)
o
Gaucho became the voice of the common man and
his earthly dialect the blunt expression of honesty and common sense
o
Idea of gauchesque satire; gaucho was the
mouthpiece of satire
-
José Hernández – Martín Fierro (77-82)
o
The author, Hernández (77)
§
Unpretentious politician and journalist
§
Was against centralization of Buenos Aires
government (post-Rosas)
§
Accused central government of neglecting the
countryside
o
Greatest Spanish American poem of the 19th
century (77)
o
Social protest poem exposing the evils that
befell the gaucho when he was conscripted for service on the frontier (77)
o
Victim of social protest (the gaucho) was transformed
into an archetypal figure (78)
o
The poem was crazy popular not only in
intellectual circles but amongst the ordinary people (78)
o
“Martín Fierro is a payador who tells the tale of his own sufferings when he is torn
from the life he loves and sent to fight the Indians on the frontier” (78)
o
There’s
some summary of the poem, pg. 79-80
o
“In plot, structure, language, and metaphor, the
poem extends beyond the regional to become universal myth – that of man’s
essential solitude” (80)
§
Solitude is emphasized by natural environment
o
It’s a “Romantic myth with the gaucho
representing the voice of nature; and society – represented by the evil army
commanders, judges, and the grotesque Vizcacha – being shown as alien and
unjust” (80-81)
The Indian
-
There was tons of Indianist literature, because:
o
The rejection of Spain made the intellectuals of
America reinterpret the pre-Columbian past (82)
o
Romanticism popularized the myth of the noble
savage (82)
-
“The theme of the
struggle between Indian and Spaniard and the tragic defeat or extermination of
the Indians was frequently dealt with in the novels of the period” (83)
Nature and the Noble
Savage
-
“inevitable that the noble savage should have
found a place in 19th century Spanish-American literature” (85)
-
Juan León de Mera (85-87)
Idyllic Nature
-
“it was difficult to idealize Latin American
nature, which was infinitely more ferocious and savage than anything known in
Europe” (88)
-
Jorge Isaacs – María, 1867 (88-89)
o
Love story set in the idyllic countryside of
Colombia
o
Summary – pg. 88
o
Mood of
nostalgia
o
Ideal landscape
o
Humanization of nature
o
Reflects the ideal of patriarchal society, “a
vision of hierarchical order and harmony in which love only has a place as a
stage in maturation”
Summary
-
“With the exception
of María, novels were partial or
wholly failures in their attempts to express American experience, since they
failed to express this in a significant form” (91)
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