Franco Conclusion (Intro to Spanish-Amer Lit)

Conclusion

-          Mutual misunderstanding between colonializing/conquesting Spaniards and Indians they found in Latin America (347)

-          “Latin Americans have often expected miracles of Europe and have been disappointed to find her fallible; while for Europeans the exotic dream of America often turns out to be a distorting mirror in which they see their own grotesque reflection” (347)

-          With independence, “Spanish American writers found themselves free of Spain but with no national tradition in which to work” (347)

-          Spanish American writers were inferior to Spaniards/Europeans in education and opportunities (347-348)

-          Latin Americans found themselves viewing their own culture from the vantage point of Europe (348)

-          High level of illiteracy was a stumbling block in Latin America (348)

o   Big gap between intellectuals and pueblo

-          Much writing in nineteenth century was overtly political (349)

-          “throughout the nineteenth century it was generally assumed that literature should civilize, educate, or even serve as an instrument of reform” (349)

-          Confusion of function in a lot of nineteenth century literature (349)

-          Modernists wanted to “identify Spanish America with the most advanced literary culture – that of France – and to break out the provincialism which dependence on Spain  had implied” (349)

-          “Latin American avant-garde of the 1920’s tended to be either on the defensive or to be extremely aggressive” (350)

-          Desire to liberate Latin America from the last vestiges of the bonds of Spanish rhetoric (350)

-          Transition from realism and naturalism to magical realism / fantasy (351)

-          “The European bourgeois novel was concerned with the norm, the typical. Latin American writers, on the other hand, were constantly faced with the odd, the extraordinary, the monstrous, seldom with anything that matched this European middle-class norm” (351)

-          “In the nineteenth century, national differences were emphasized and exaggerated as the new countries strove to affirm their separate identities, often resorting to war, aggression or chauvinistic shows of force to create patriotic sentiment” (351)

-          Gradual breakdown of barriers between nations (352)

-          Emergence of Buenos Aires and Mexico as two major publishing cities; development of large-scale publishing (352)