Chapter 2: Literature and Nationalism
Comps people mentioned
-
Esteban
Echeverría – El matadero (pg. 47-52)
-
Domingo
Sarmiento (pg. 52-55)
-
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda – Sab (pg. 61)
-
Juan
Francisco Monzano – Autobiography (pg.
61)
-
Ricardo
Palma – Tradiciones peruanas (pg.
68-70)
General Notes
Introduction
-
There were many tertulias/literary circles in
post-independence Latin America, often formed with the goal of
stimulating/encouraging the production of a national
literature. These tertulias often also had some political ties rather
than just literary (46)
-
There was lots of fascination with the Romantic movement, especially during the first
half of the 19th century (46)
o
“in Latin America,
Romanticism was identified above all with individual freedom and nationalism”
(46)
-
Link between political and literary revolution –
“new literature was thus identified with political and social reform in the
minds of young intellectuals who held on to these ideals during dark periods of
oppression, dictatorship, and civil war” (46-47)
-
Literature (novel and poetry) was an instrument for attacking injustices, and for creating
a sense of patriotism and civic pride (47)
-
Literature (especially histories and essays) often
stressed differences between new countries and Spain, and to underline the
mistakes made by Spain in her administration of the colonies (47)
o
My example of this would be: Carta de Jamaica by Simón Bolívar
o
Idea that Spanish colonial rule is responsible
for backwardness of new republics
Civilization and
Barbarism
-
Connection between Romanticism and the new
countries’ determination to create original national literatures (47)
-
Romantics saw literature as a definition of the
national spirit and literature and national identity were closely linked in
their minds – Latin Americans focused on this idea, especially emphasizing the
desire for originality (47)
-
Esteban Echeverría
o
Part of Creole aristocracy
o
Lived in Argentina during Rosas’ dictatorship. Echeverría
was against Rosas because he was into the European scene and progress, while
Rosas was stubbornly anti-Europe. (48)
o
He introduced Romantic ideas in Argentina (48)
o
He expressed the
dilemma of his time: artistic tendencies teach the writer to love the
countryside and the “folk,” but living experiences teach the man that the
countryside and its inhabitants constitute a threat to all the values (48)
§
This dilemma was founded in the different
contexts of European romanticism vs. Latin American romanticism (49)
§
In Europe, idealize the countryside and the
simple life of the peasant
§
In Latin Amer., the country = savage Indians and
half-wild gauchos
o
El matadero (50-52)
§
Defends European values and attacks primitive
native barbarism
§
The conflict between the forces of primitive
darkness (the tribe or the mass) and the civilized individual
§
Political allegory which attacks the
dictatorship of Rosas and the barbarism of his supporters
§
Story relates an incident that took place in the
slaughterhouse of Buenos Aires during the Lenten fast – the sudden arrival of
50 head of cattle after a period without meat is the occasion for an orgy of
butchering
§
Butchers are symbolic for gauchos, the parts of
the nation that supported Rosas
§
Image of a degraded society, in which men are
ready to betray one another and Negro/mulatto men/women are too insensitive to
realize the disgusting nature of their work
§
Death of a young man dressed in European style –
symbolic; this is the story of the forces of civilization defeated by those of
barbarism
-
Domingo Sarmiento
(52-55)
o
Argentinean essayist, politician, and
educationalist (52)
o
Humble yet respectable Spanish background; pride
because he made his own way in the world since his parents were poor (52)
o
Was against the whole gaucho scene and Rosas
(52)
o
He exiled to Chile for a bit, and when he
returned to Argentina he actually became president of the republic from
1868-1874 (55)
o
Desire for the
modern Latin American man to be like the European enlightened man of progress
(55)
o
Vida de Juan Facundo
Quiroga: Civilización y barbarie (53-54)
§
This essay was the biography of a local gaucho
tyrant
§
Seeks to explain the
dominance of barbarism and cruelty in Argentinean political life by
studying the influence of the physical environment
§
“while Sarmiento appreciates the poetry of pampa
life, he cannot accept the gaucho as a national stereotype. His [The gaucho’s]
way of life is medieval”
§
Second part of essay: Gaucho values have encouraged
the rise of cruel tyrants
Nationalism and the
Novel
-
“the novel was a more recent genre, the
seriousness of which still had to be justified” – this is why many novelists of
the early 19th century wrote explanatory prefaces justifying their use
of the genre (56)
-
“All too often the
nineteenth-century Spanish American novel is clumsy and inept, with a plot derived
at second hand from the contemporary European Romantic novel” (56)
-
José Mármol – Amalia (56-58)
The Caribbean Novel
and the National Cause
-
“nowhere was Romanticism associated with the
struggle for freedom more fervently than in the Caribbean, and particularly in
Cuba where the struggle for independence endured for the whole of the 19th
century” (59)
-
“since no liberal
could support national independence without taking up the cause of the Negro
salve, the novel also became an anti-slavery document” (59)
-
Cirilo Villaverde – Cecilia Valdés (59-60)
o
His novel was quite famous, romantic/realist
influences
-
Gertrudis Gómez de
Avellaneda – Sab, 1841 (61)
o
Her life: (1814-1873), Cuban birth but life in Spain
o
Hero of novel was a slave outcast and rebel
-
Slaves could not make themselves heard. One exception
was Autobiography of the former slave, Juan
Francisco Manzano. This text makes us realize the difference between first-hand
experience and the descriptions of an outsider, however sympathetic said
outsider may be. (61)
-
Eugenio María de Hostos (61-62)
o
Puerto Rican, Spanish American freedom fighter
The Historical Novel
-
Romanticism made the
historical novel popular (62)
-
The historical novel
was viewed as the best way of creating a sense of national identity, since you could
expose the evils of Spanish colonial rule and celebrate the deeds of national
heroes (62)
-
Greatest difficulty faced by the writer of
historical novels was verisimilitude (62)
-
These novels brought forth subjects which were
previously taboo, such as the heroism of the Indians during the conquest, the
evils of the Inquisition, and the rights of Jews/Protestants to be considered human
beings
The Historical Novel
in Uruguay
-
Uruguay was special because it had to fight
doubly for independence, first from the Spanish and then from the Portuguese,
who took control in an invasion (63)
-
Alejandro Magariños Cervantes – Caramarú (63-64)
-
Acevedo Díaz (64-66)
o
Liberation of Uruguay is the central event in
his novels
Nationalism and
Literature in Peru
-
“Peru emerged from Independence bearing the
weight of past magnificence from the period when Lima had been the
intellectual, social, and political center of South America” (66)
-
“Even after Independence, the conservative and
aristocratic traditions were strong” (66)
-
Felipe Pardo y Aliaga (66-67)
-
Manuel
Ascensio Segura y Cordero (67-68)
-
Ricardo Palma (68-70)
o
He was famous as the inventor of an original
genre, the tradiciones, which are
short historical anecdotes that “covered every period of Peruvian history from
pre-conquest times to the period in which he was writing” (68)
o
His tradiciones
were published first in newspapers and then in a series of books
o
“Unlike the writers of historical novels, he
does not preach nationalism in the tradiciones;
at the same time, his correspondence reveals a man who was deeply concerned
with the lack of national spirit which he witnessed during the Peruvian-Chilean
war” (68)
o
Idea of author standing at a distance and allowing
the reader to draw his own conclusion from the tale (69)
o
Best of the tradiciones
are set in period of the Viceroys; Palma’s attraction to the formality and
order of the colonial period (69)
o
Entertaining and witty feel to the anecdotes (70)
Altamirano and Mexican
Literary Nationalism
-
Literary nationalism was a late development in
Mexico, despite Lizardi’s early example (70)
-
Ignacio Altamirano (71-73)
o
Most conscious and determined effort to create a
Mexican national literature
o
Belief that Mexican poetry and literature should
be completely original
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