Chapter 6: A Rediscovery of the New World
Comps writers mentioned
-
José
Enrique Rodó – Ariel (pg. 158-161)
-
José
Asunción Silva – De Sobremesa (pg. 174)
-
Florencio
Sánchez (pg. 190-192)
General Notes
Introduction
-
In 1898, Spain lost
Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippine islands, her last remaining colonies in
the new World (158)
-
Shadow on liberation of Cuba because it was due
to United States’ defeat of Spain – intellectuals wanted Cuba to be free, but
not due to U.S. – idea of superiority of Anglo Saxons in comparison with
racially-mixed societies such as Latin America (158)
-
Struggling Latin American countries compared themselves
with successful U.S. (158)
The Essay (and Rodó)
-
José Enrique Rodó
(1872-1917)
o
Young Uruguayan literature professor (158)
o
One of a new generation of Uruguayans, “educated
in a lay school, conversant with positivist theory and now alive to weaknesses
as well as to the valuable aspects of positivism” (158)
o
One of Uruguay’s leading intellectuals (158)
-
Rodó’s essay, Ariel
o
Published in 1900 (158)
o
Tone of forward-looking optimism (158)
o
Directed to the youth of the American continent,
whom he saw as the hope for the future (159)
o
Use of symbolism (159)
§
Ariel represented ideal values
§
Caliban represented the instinctual side of man
o
Belief that natural selection would encourage
the development of a superior type of human being that was able to transcend
instinct and act unselfishly and with the highest of motives (159)
o
Belief in the power of reason over instincts
(159)
o
Belief in the moral force of beauty – one couldn’t
love beauty and act evilly (159)
-
Rodó wanted the American continent to look
beyond the selfish desire to become rich/prosperous towards a nobler goal (160)
– this sounds a bit modernist
o
United States as negative example of drive of prosperity
– they were successful and efficient, but no great art
-
Most influential notions propagated in Rodó’s Ariel (160-161):
o
Identification of United States with
utilitarianism (negative, bad), and identification of Latin Amer with a nobler
ideal
o
Nations of Latin Amer formed a cultural unity
with roots in Mediterranean civilization
o
Task of intellectual was to set a high example
(morally and culturally)
o
Task of intellectual was not only creation of
Latin American culture but also preservation of past culture
o
Societies were shaped by guiding ideas
o
Importance of education both as a training for
the intellectual elite and a means of improving the masses (sounds slightly ilustrado here)
-
Earnest moral tone
of Ariel – this was imitated in lots
of other literature, pretty much until the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution
(161)
-
Several other essays were inspired by Rodó’s Ariel; various types of these other
essays include (162):
o
Descriptions of Latin America’s cultural
tradition with aim to improve the vision of Latin American civilization in the
eyes of the rest of the world
o
Collections of essays on “great men”
o
Essays analyzing the historical and environmental
factors affecting the continent, and putting forth a program for the future
o
Educational essays
-
Twin interest in
analysis and reform (162)
-
Expression of emotions and conflicts not in
terms of Greek myth or other archetypes but through elements of their own
environment (163)
Poetry
-
Modernist poets became Americanist; tone of
nostalgia (163)
-
Some examples of Modernist/Americanist poets of
early 20th century – Leopoldo Lugones, José Santos Chocano, Baldomero
Fernández Moreno, Carlos Pezoa Véliz, and Ramón López Velarde (163-172) – but none of them are on Comps list, so I’m
not reading this section…
The Novel and Short
Story
-
Novel and short story of this period (early 20th
century) were primarily concerned with rural life and particularly the lives of
the poor (173)
-
Tendency to didacticism (173)
-
Many novelists of the period were men who came
from wealthy or middle-class families (173)
o
Their interest in the lives of the peasants
often sprang out of a feeling of disillusionment with city life (this is a bit like Enlightenment poetry,
like Melendez Valdes and friends)
-
Influence of costumbrismo and also contemporary French
realism and naturalism on prose writing (173-174)
-
The prose writer found a source of inspiration
in the beauty of the landscape, but his description of the peasants was not
always idealized (174)
-
The prose writer was also influenced by the
moralizing and didactic tone of the essayists (174)
-
Three broad streams of prose writing (174):
o
Novels and stories which record provincial life
with warmth and humor
o
Novels and stories which expose either the
sordidness of the life of the poor or arouse indignation at the exploitation of
the poor
o
Novel of intellectual frustration (example: De Sobremesa by José Asunción Silva)
-
Some of the first novels of urban society were
published during this period, dealing with the moral sickness of members of the
middle classes – examples are the novels of the Mexican, Federico Gamboa (174)
The Plate Region /
Argentina
-
Argentina was the most urbanized of the
Latin-American countries, and also the country which had admitted the greatest
proportion of European immigrants (174)
o
Problem of rootlessness and lack of tradition
o
This problem is explore din the social criticism
novels of Roberto Payró and Manuel Gálvez, but they’re not on the list! (175-178)
Uruguay
-
Provincial themes (179)
-
Carlos Reyles and Javier de Viana – not on the list (179-181)
-
Idea of life lived at a primitive level;
concentration on age, decay, and neglect, sordid tone – idea that the elite has
allowed the rural areas to fall into decay (181)
Chile
-
Intellectuals focused on countryside, attempt of
a return to the simple life of the peasant (again, seems very enlightened!) (181)
-
Moralizing tendency, as was also seen in
Argentina and Uruguay (181)
-
Baldomero Lillo and Mariano Latorre – not on list (181-183)
o
Latorre: Theme of man’s fight against nature
The Andean republics
and Mexico
-
No outstanding novel appeared in either the
Andean Republics or Mexico during the period before 1920 (184)
-
Awakening interest in the lives of those who
lived outside the capital cities – some of the first novels and stories on
Indian life (184)
-
Strong moralizing tendency still (184)
-
First tentative explorations of Indian life
(184)
Venezuela and Colombia
-
In Venezuela and Colombia, period after 1900 was
dominated by criollismo in literature
(187)
o
Criollismo = the painting, carried to the extremes,
of popular customs with the types and language of the lower class
-
Continued moralizing and didactic tone (187)
Theatre
-
Theatre had been popular throughout the 19th
century in the big towns (such as Buenos Aires and Mexico City) but any plays
on native themes by native dramatists were not considered worthy of attention by
the elite (190)
-
In this time period, native writers/dramatists
started to want to explore native themes in theatre more (190)
-
Florencio Sánchez
(1875-1910)
o
Uruguayan writer whose plays were written in
Argentina and performed with great success in Buenos Aires (190)
o
He brought typical Argentinean and Uruguayan
problems to stage – particularly the clash between the immigrant and the old
style gaucho (190)
o
His plays reflect not only the social situation
but also the moral crisis of the intellectual élite (190)
o
In his plays he attempts to show the passing of
one age and the beginning of another rather than to offer solutions to the ills
of society (191)
-
Florencio Sánchez – Barranca abajo (191-192)
o
His most successful play
o
Drama of the decline and death of don Zoilo, a
creole farmer of the old school
o
Ends with Zoilo’s suicide
o
There’s a summary, pg. 191-192
o
Hostility of Zoilo’s family = hostility of new society
in which the old creole virtues have disappeared
Concluding Summary
-
Modernism helped to raise the prestige of
literature in Spanish America
-
Criollismo
is a major indicator of the movement of literature into American themes; also
marks the increasing consciousness of the poverty and injustices the majority
of the population suffered
