Spanish-American Narrative & Poetry: A Literary Overview

Posted on Sep 26, 2024 in Latin

Spanish-American Narrative

a) The Realistic Novel or Regionalist (until 1940)

Main Issues

  • The struggle of man with the wild and violent.
  • The political problems peculiar to Spanish America (dictatorships, changes in government, etc.).
  • The social problems (economic inequalities, chiefs, and the oppressive condition of the Indian).

Trends

Land Fiction
  • Frequent Item: American nature against civilization.
  • Held in: Venezuelan plains, the pampas of Argentina, and the Colombian jungle.
  • Author: Rómulo Gallegos (Doña Bárbara). Dramatizes the conflict between civilization and barbarism. Doña Bárbara represents barbarism. Santos Luzardo, a young engineer, comes to town and falls for the daughter of Doña Bárbara, Marisela. Luzardo represents the modern city. The ending will be a happy one, symbolizing faith in the future and progress.
Social Novel (Social Problems)
  • Topics: Posture complaint, protest, or disappointment.
  • Novels of the Mexican Revolution: Author: Mariano Azuela (Los de abajo). The novel was published in serial in a newspaper and later in Mexico as a historical novel. It collects revolutionary events around Demetrio Macías, a guerilla, peasant, and illiterate who follows a group of peers. Each character represents an aspect of Mexican society. They are very established characters, symbolic, such as the rebel, the opportunist, the subject, etc. Within this range, the most negative character is from the city and the positive from the countryside.
  • Indian Novel:
    • Topics: Predominantly social issues, claims of lost rights on land ownership, and indigenous people working in conditions akin to slavery.
    • Author: Ciro Alegría (The World is Wide and Alien). Describes with great lyricism the Indian community that will be destroyed by the white man. This work embodies strong community values close to socialism.

b) Passing the Realism (since 1940)

  • Tired of realism
  • Major concerns about the form of the novel and short story
  • It takes into account the innovations of foreign narrators
  • Influence of the avant-garde
  • Incorporation of new narrative techniques (interior monologue)
  • Elements of surrealism (dream elements, visionary images, etc.)
  • New treatment of the above topics (urban worlds, existential problems)
  • Taste for imagination and fantasy (magical realism, fusion of magic with the everyday, in daily life – there were 2 variants: Sometimes reality is presented as wonderful and vice versa).
  • Principal author: Juan Rulfo (Pedro Páramo). The protagonist, Juan Preciado, reaches Comala in search of his father. It is a deserted village. Through the ancient inhabitants of the village, he learns about the past of Comala and his father, Chief Pedro Páramo. The characters discover Juan is dead and he is a ghost that communicates with other dead in their graves.

c) The Boom of the Narrative (from the 1960s)

  • Overcoming the realistic aesthetic
  • They consolidate and apply the narrative of the previous stage
  • Deep experimentation with form and structure of the story and the novel:
    • Novels are more subjective; the narrator participates in the story as the protagonist or witness.
    • Multiple perspectives; the narrator constructs the story from several points of view and can hide information from the reader.
    • Technique of counterpoint: the case of combining several different stories into another.
    • Internal monologue
    • Experimentation with language
    • They work with all registers (colloquial, indigenous languages, etc.).
  • Novelty marks (influence of the -isms and the avant-garde)
  • Rupture with syntax (invented words and focus on the musicality of syllables)
  • Consolidation of magical realism
  • The loneliness of man and his isolation: There are many characters who want to end their solitary isolation. Sex, clearly described without moral values, becomes a possible way to end loneliness.
  • Idea of the subconscious, with the technique of interior monologue.
  • Ideological commitment: almost universal rejection of the American capitalist system.
  • Authors:
    • Julio Cortázar (Rayuela) 1963. Presents formal innovation in its structure, whose linearity is replaced by a double proposal: make a traditional reading by reading the 1st and 2nd parts apart from the 3rd, or alternate or intersperse chapters by another route. Plot: The novel has 3 parts. The first 2 are centered on the intellectual Horacio Oliveira, who is experiencing several adventures in Paris. Part 1 is called “From the Other Side”. There lives La Maga, a character who represents innocence and fantasy. After Buenos Aires, Part 2, “From This Side”, is where Horacio remembers La Maga and believes he recognizes her in another woman named Talita. The last part is called “From Other Places” and contains the chapters that the author considers expendable. Topics: are a reflection on creative writing and language, hence the invention of “gíglico”. Language is insufficient; we must invent it. The last issue is angst, in which Oliveira maintains an attitude of finding meaning in his life and ends up going insane.
    • Mario Vargas Llosa (The Time of the Hero) 1962. Synopsis: chronicles the lives of some students at a military school in Lima, where the novices are called “dogs” and suffer all kinds of bullying and violence by senior students. The conflict breaks out when a student dies. His narrative is in a more realistic flow but includes the presence of dream elements (dreams) and also multiple viewpoints. It is a critique of Peruvian society, the upper classes, and the military.
    • Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) 1967. Plot: one hundred years of history of the city of Macondo (invented by him). From the founding of the village by José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, to its decline and destruction by a flood. It is the story of the Buendía family from its inception to the death of the last descendant, who ended a race threatened by the fear of creating monsters. They are individual stories of this family, but also about 70 characters. Topics: loneliness, disappointment, love, etc. Use of magical realism, for example, the presence of death and the supernatural (the dead coexist with the living).

Poetry

  • Modernism: Most important author: Rubén Darío (Azul) 1888
  • Postmodernism: Poetry emphasizes simplicity.
  • Vanguard (Decade 1920) highlights Vicente Huidobro (Altazor) 1931.
  • Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was his first work) (1924). He began his poetic career in modernism and neo-romanticism. From 1923, he leaned towards surrealism, and the book we can emphasize is Residence on Earth. The existential theme is centered on death and love. Later in his poetry, he alternated between social and engaged tones. Canto General is a book that pays tribute to Chile and throughout Latin America.
  • Octavio Paz: It has 3 stages: The first covers social issues and has neo-romantic and surrealist influences. The work that stands out is Libertad bajo palabra (1960). Stage 2 identifies with the irrationality of surrealism. We highlight the work called Salamandra (1962). In the third stage, his poetry will have a mix of Eastern influences with linguistic experiments. His highlighted work is Ladera Este (1969).
  • Mario Benedetti: At 18, he moved to Argentina. Two periods are marked by the circumstances. Initially, he developed a more realistic poetry with low formal experimentation; the work that stands out is Poemas de la oficina (1956). In stage 2, his works echoed the anguish and hope of broad social sectors of Latin America with military repression. La casa y el ladrillo (1977) was highlighted.