Literary Criticism in Spanish America

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Literary criticism in Spanish America

Aníbal González
Literary criticism already has a long and distinguished history in Spanish

A m e r i c a , one that encompasses such diverse figures as Andrés Bello
( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 6 5 ) , José Enrique R o d ó ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 7 ) , Pedro Henríquez Ureña
(1884-1946), A l f o n s o Reyes (1889-1959), Emir R o d r í g u e z M o n e g a l
( 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 8 5 ) , and Á n g e l R a m a (1926-1983). Nevertheless, Spanish A m e r i -
can literary criticism has sometimes had to contend w i t h feelings o f
inadequacy, not only in comparison to its subject but also to the literary
criticism of Europe and the United States.
T h e inadequacy has often been real, of course, and Spanish A m e r i c a n
critics have been the first to point out the deficiencies and vices of criticism
in Spanish A m e r i c a , as well as the obstacles it has had to face. A m o n g the
former, critics note its mimetic character, journalistic superficiality, lack
of patience with serious scholarship, and ideological tendentiousness;
a m o n g the latter are censorship, exile, and sheer lack of financial and
institutional support. T h e absence of any book-length history of Spanish
A m e r i c a n criticism is probably symptomatic of the unease Spanish
A m e r i c a n critics and literary historians share with regard to this subject.
Feelings of inadequacy and belatedness are nevertheless endemic to
literary criticism wherever it occurs, h o w e v e r much critics may try to hide
them beneath an authoritarian rhetoric. In modern literature, w h i c h has
absorbed criticism into its make-up to a very high degree but w i t h o u t its
institutional or ideological constraints, there is a l w a y s a propensity to
surpass the exegetes. T h i s in turn has forced critics to compete w i t h
creative writers in the elaboration of ever more probing theories of w h a t
literature is and h o w it achieves its effects.
Lately, poet-critics such as O c t a v i o Paz (b. 1914) and literary theorists
such as R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría (b. 1943) have remarked on the
overall weakness of critical thinking in the Hispanic w o r l d and have
suggested that profoundly critical thought - in the philosophic as well as
in the literary sense - can best be found in the w o r k s of Spanish A m e r i c a ' s
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C A M B R I D G E H I S T O R Y OF L A T I N A M E R I C A N LITERATURE
great poets and narrators rather than in those of scholars or academics.

For these t w o commentators of the critical scene, Spanish A m e r i c a n
literary criticism, while it has had its share of achievements, lags far
behind poetry and narrative fiction in self-awareness, methodological
rigor, and questioning ability.
G o n z á l e z Echevarría has furthermore suggested that because, as a
political and cultural entity, Spanish A m e r i c a is a creation of the modern
age, its literature is thus already modern in themes and o u t l o o k - that is to
say, it deals w i t h the typically modern topics of originality and historical
development (The Voice of the Masters, 33-40). Unwilling or unable to
recognize its "original modernity," h o w e v e r , Spanish A m e r i c a n literature
has sought modernity as defined by other national literatures, and — if one
accepts the identification of criticism w i t h modernity - this has led to a
"critical r e d o u b l i n g , " or hypercriticism, in Spanish A m e r i c a n literature
w i t h w h i c h ordinary academic or journalistic criticism, subject to ideolo
gical, methodological, and institutional limitations, cannot hope to
compete. T h e history of professional (that is, academic or journalistic)
literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a is therefore a chronicle of delusions,
misreadings, and outright falsification, w i t h a few bright areas in the
realms of scholarship and literary history.
Nevertheless, the history of criticism is essentially a history of ideas.
Even erroneous ideas, if sufficiently widespread, can have an impact on
real-world processes and must therefore be studied. T h e fictions and
fantasies of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism differ from those of
European and US literary criticism mainly in their greater emphasis on
forging a coherent image of culture. Buffeted by violent social and
political changes, and plagued by doubts about the viability of Spanish
A m e r i c a ' s political independence, literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a
has developed a vested interest in the creation and preservation of a solidly
founded and broadly accepted notion of national culture. It is this cultural
conservatism that undermines the critical impulse, since it defines an area
that must remain untouched by critical thought. T h e tension between
Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and its critics thus arises not only from an
old-fashioned criticism straining to catch up with a highly experimental
literature, but also from the conflict that arises from Spanish A m e r i c a n
literature's insistent questioning of the concept of culture in w h i c h
criticism has such a considerable stake. A t present, as G o n z á l e z Echeva
rría has pointed out (The Voice of the Masters), the consensus about
Spanish A m e r i c a n culture that w a s so important to critical discourse in
the region has finally broken d o w n . H o w e v e r , until recently the history of
literary criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a w a s closely linked w i t h the attempt
to lay d o w n the foundations of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, with everything
this implies in terms of critical blindness and delusion.
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W i t h i n this process of cultural instauration that is in part the history of

Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism, a series of broad stages or periods can
be discerned: R o m a n t i c i s m [Romanticismo] (1810—1880s); M o d e r n i s m
[Modernismo] (1880S-1920S); Tellurism ( 1 9 2 0 S - 1 9 6 0 S ) , and Postmoder-
nity ( i 9 6 0 - ). T h e first covered much of the nineteenth century, from
Independence to the 1880s. Representative critics of this period are A n d r e s
Bello, D o m i n g o Faustino Sarmiento (1811—1888), D o m i n g o Del M o n t e
(1804-1853), and Juan M a r i a Gutierrez (1809-1878; some of these writers
were, of course, far more than critics of literature). T h e period is
characterized by the importation of some elements of romantic philology,
the beginnings of the search for cultural definition, and the invention of a
Spanish A m e r i c a n literary history following the European model, one in
w h i c h the colonial period t o o k the place of Europe's M i d d l e A g e s . Social
and political concerns were also important at this stage, since criticism
w a s seen at the time as an instrument in nation-building.
T h e second period covered the turn of the century (from the 1880s to the
1920s), essentially coinciding w i t h the Spanish A m e r i c a n modernist
movement. T h i s period abounded in important critical w o r k s , because it
witnessed the systematic incorporation of the aims and methods of
philology, of literary criticism (as it w a s embodied in the w o r k of French
philologists and critics such as Charles A u g u s t i n Saint-Beuve, Ernest
R e n a n , and H i p p o l y t e T a i n e ) , into Spanish A m e r i c a n literature; thus,
many of the major Modernists, such as José M a r t i (1853-1895) and R u b e n
D a r i o ( 1 8 6 7 - 1 9 1 6 ) , were also important critics. Furthermore, as many
have argued, the modernist period is characterized by the increasing
professionalization of the Spanish A m e r i c a n writers, and this w a s also the
case for the critics. T h e first major professional literary critic in Spanish
A m e r i c a w a s w i t h o u t a doubt José Enrique R o d o ( 1 8 7 1 - 1 9 1 7 ) . Other
prominent critics of the time were Rufino Blanco F o m b o n a (1874-1944),
Ventura G a r c i a C a l d e r ó n (1887-1960), Paul Groussac (1848-1929), Bal-
d o m e r o Sanin C a n o ( 1 8 6 1 - 1 9 5 7 ) , and Enrique José V a r o n a (1849-1933).
Salient characteristics of criticism in this period were: a tension between
aestheticist and positivist approaches to literature, a concern with the
relation between ethics and aesthetics, and a strengthening of academic as
well as journalistic literary criticism.
T h e third stage in the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism, w h i c h may
be called the telluric period, extended from the late 1920s to the 1960s. T h e
term "telluric" refers to the renewed preoccupation w i t h social reform
and national identity this criticism shared w i t h that of the R o m a n t i c s and
w i t h the " n o v e l a s de la tierra." T h e most c o m m o n critical approach of
this period w a s the production of broad accounts of Spanish A m e r i c a n
culture's origin and evolution. T h e Telluric period produced numerous
important professional critics, such as Pedro Henriquez Urefia, M a r i a n o
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Picon Salas (1901-1965), and Alfonso Reyes ( w h o , admittedly, w a s also a

broad-ranging " m a n of letters"). It also witnessed the arrival in Spanish
A m e r i c a of a plethora of major Spanish writers and intellectuals, exiled
after Spain's Civil W a r ; a m o n g these were scholars and critics such as
Federico de O n i s , A m a d o A l o n s o , and A m e r i c o C a s t r o . A greater
academization of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism w a s also evidenced
during these decades, w h i c h saw also the g r o w t h of academic Hispanism
in the United States. T h e predominant critical m e t h o d o l o g y during this
period w a s stylistics, the Hispanic equivalent of A n g l o - A m e r i c a n N e w
Criticism. T h e importance of social commitment to this critical period is
underscored by the appearance of the first important w o r k s of M a r x i s t
criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a by critics such as José C a r l o s M a r i a t e g u i
(1895-1930), Juan M a n n e l l o (1898-1977), and A n i b a l Ponce (1898-1938).
A crisis in critical m e t h o d o l o g y w a s part of the change from the telluric
to the current period. If " m o d e r n i t y , " both as a concept and as a historical
period, is a byproduct of the Enlightenment and of R o m a n t i c i s m , then the
current radical critique of the ideological legacy of these t w o moments of
European civilization w o u l d have to be labeled " p o s t m o d e r n . " T h e rise of
the Spanish A m e r i c a n " n e w n o v e l " during the 1960s (the so-called
" B o o m " ) announced a serious questioning of the ideological underpin
nings of Telluric criticism. Political events such as the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n
gave n e w impetus to M a r x i s t and sociological approaches to cultural and
literary studies. Simultaneously, new European critical methodologies
such as Structuralism, semiotics, and Post-structuralism, began to arrive
in Spanish A m e r i c a , and a debate ensued between these various m e t h o d o
logies and M a r x i s t literary criticism. T h e critical consensus achieved
during the telluric period w a s lost, and the current p a n o r a m a of Spanish
A m e r i c a n literary criticism is characterized by its diversity. Furthermore,
the economic and social crises in Spanish A m e r i c a during the 1970s and
1980s have caused w a v e s of intellectuals from these countries to m o v e to
the United States and Europe, eroding the cultural p a n o r a m a of their
h o m e countries and widening the g a p , in quantity and quality, between
the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism produced in the United States and
that produced in the Spanish A m e r i c a n countries themselves. W h i l e much
of the best Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism (like a g o o d deal of Spanish
A m e r i c a n literature) has a l w a y s been produced by exiles or expatriates, in
the last decades frequent travel or emigration to wealthier countries w i t h
richer, more stable academic environments has become almost a necessity
for Spanish A m e r i c a n literary scholars.
Frequently throughout the history of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature, the
major writers of a given period have also been a m o n g its most important
critics (as is the case w i t h Bello, M a r t i , and Reyes). H o w e v e r , it may be
indicative of the recent crisis in criticism that crossover between creative
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writers and critics has been especially c o m m o n since the 1950s: the most
influential critical figures during this period form a spectrum that
encompasses criticism and creative writing in a fluid continuum, from
writer-critics such as Jorge Luis Borges (1900-1986), O c t a v i o Paz, José
L e z a m a L i m a ( 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 7 4 ) , and Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), to academic
and journalistic critics such as A n g e l R a m a and Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ,
a m o n g others.
Before w e begin to examine the periods outlined a b o v e in more detail,

mention must be made of the incipient literary criticism found in the early
gazettes, dailies, and journals of colonial Spanish A m e r i c a . T h i s is a
poorly studied subject that still awaits serious scholarly research. T h e rise
of regularly published journals or gazettes in Spanish A m e r i c a dates back
to the eighteenth century and publications such as the Gaceta de Mexico
(1728-1738) and the Gacetas de Literatura de México (1788-1795), edited
by José A n t o n i o A l z a t e ( 1 7 2 9 - 1 7 9 9 ) , the Mercurio Peruano ( 1 7 9 1 - 1 7 9 5 ) ,
edited by H i p ó l i t o Unanue ( 1 7 5 5 - 1 8 3 3 ) , the Papel Periódico de La
Habana (1790-1804), edited by D i e g o de la Barrera, T o m á s R o m a y , and
José Agustín C a b a l l e r o , and the Diario de México ( 1 8 0 5 - 1 8 1 7 ) , edited by
C a r l o s M a r í a Bustamante (1744-1848). T h e term "literature" w a s used
rather loosely in those times, and much of w h a t w a s published under that
heading in, for e x a m p l e , the Gacetas de Literatura de México, was
actually information pertaining to natural history, agriculture, philos
ophy, e c o n o m y , and "antiquities" (such as the M e x i c a n ruins of X o c h i -
calco). T h e Diario de México, M e x i c o ' s first true daily, did print poetry,
essays on manners, and theatre reviews. T h e latter commented more on
the performance than on the texts, and thus fall outside the scope of
literary criticism. M u c h of the poetry published in the Diario de México
w a s produced by members of the " A r c a d i a de M é x i c o , " one of the various
"poetic a c a d e m i e s " that arose in Spanish A m e r i c a around the m i d - i j o o s
in imitation of similar European institutions. In Spanish A m e r i c a , these
academies served not only to establish standards of poetic taste, but also
to disseminate Enlightenment ideas and to foment patriotic feelings (such
w a s the case w i t h the " S o c i e d a d Patriótica y Literaria" in Buenos Aires
and the " T e r t u l i a Eutrapélica" in B o g o t á ) .
T h e scant criticism that appears in early Spanish A m e r i c a n periodicals
is usually in the letters addressed to the editor by some of the readers. In
these, comments on the poetry published in previous issues or discussion
on matters of literary taste can be found. T h e s e comments are generally
prescriptive, and attempt to follow the dictates of neoclassical poetics
such as those of N i c h o l a s Boileau or Ignacio de L u z á n . Propriety,
idealization, reasonableness, conformity to rules, and avoidance of
latinisms or obscure w o r d s - indeed, an overt anti-Gongorism - are the
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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF L A T I N A M E R I C A N LITERATURE
literary values stressed in this criticism. O c c a s i o n a l l y , there are expres

sions of an incipient literary regionalism, as w h e n M a n u e l del Socorro
R o d r i g u e z ( 1 7 5 8 - 1 8 1 8 ) , in the Semanario de Nueva Granada, defends the
poetry written in the V i c e r o y a l t y of N e w G r a n a d a from charges that it is
inferior to that written in M e x i c o or Peru.
A l t h o u g h much of this late eighteenth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n
criticism - like the literature to w h i c h it responded - appears today
excessively pedantic, constrained, and conservative, it w a s perceived
quite differently at the time. Instead, it w a s seen as part of a broad
movement of sociopolitical and cultural renewal launched by the French-
inspired reformism of the Spanish monarch Charles III. M a n y of the stuffy
neoclassical versifiers and critics w h o published in the Diario de México
or the Papel Periódico de La Habana were y o u n g men, members of the
creóle elite, w h o shared a g r o w i n g cosmopolitan attitude and a hunger for
new ideas. It w a s from this g r o u p , in fact, that the founder of modern
Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism arose: Andrés Bello, w h o before leaving for
England in 1810 had already acquired a solid classical education at the
university in C a r a c a s (where he had been an outstanding latinist),
participated in the aristocratic salons of the Ustáriz and Bolivar families,
and written for the Gaceta de Caracas. M o r e o v e r , he had conversed at
length w i t h A l e x a n d e r v o n H u m b o l d t during the latter's visit to C a r a c a s
in 1800, and had learned from him about the n e w ideas in linguistics,
literature, and science generated by the European R o m a n t i c s .
T h e romantic period of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism indeed
begins w i t h Bello. Specialists on Bello have divided his life into three
stages: the first comprises his birth and education in C a r a c a s ( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 1 0 ) ;
the second, his years of residence in L o n d o n (1810-1829); and the last and
longest stage, his residence in Chile (1829-1865). M o s t of these specialists
agree that his L o n d o n period w a s the most fruitful from the point of v i e w
of research and publication; it w a s there that Bello w r o t e his studies o n
Spanish medieval literature, his p o e m s " A l o c u c i ó n a la p o e s í a " (1823) and
"Silva a la agricultura de la zona t ó r r i d a " (1826), and founded and
directed the journals Biblioteca Americana (1823) and Repertorio Ameri
cano (1826-1827).
Bello lived and w o r k e d in L o n d o n as a diplomat representing the
revolutionary junta of C a r a c a s . L o n d o n , the capital of European libera
lism and of the w o r l d ' s most powerful empire at the time, w a s a rich
repository of culture w h i c h Bello tapped to the fullest. In the British
M u s e u m , he researched the origins of Spanish poetry in his studies on the
Spanish epic, the Cantar del Mío Cid, and romance versification. D u r i n g
his years in L o n d o n , Bello f o l l o w e d the polemics p r o v o k e d by the
publication of L o r d B y r o n ' s Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812. H e read
and commented on the w o r k s of R o b e r t Southey, Sir Walter Scott, and
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James Fenimore C o o p e r ; he befriended the philosopher James M i l l and

w o r k e d at collecting and organizing Jeremy Bentham's manuscripts; and
he of course associated with the c o m m u n i t y of exiled Spanish liberals such
as José M a r i a Blanco-White and José Joaquin de M o r a .
O n the other hand, Bello's Chilean period is generally seen as less
creative and more pedagogical. Unable to pursue many of his original
researches, Bello t o o k on the role of teacher, founder of cultural institu-
tions such as the C o l e g i o de Santiago, and journalist, in publications such
as El Araucano. It w a s during this stage of his life, specifically in the year
1842, that Bello became involved in the famous polemic concerning
R o m a n t i c i s m , w h i c h pitted him against Sarmiento. In a series of articles
entitled collectively "<;Por que no hay poetas en C h i l e ? , " Sarmiento
ridiculed Bello's inclinations t o w a r d a neoclassical aesthetic and blamed
him for the academizing and pro-Spanish trend in the y o u n g Chilean
writers. Bello replied directly to Sarmiento's criticisms only once, in a
gently ironic article published in El Mercurio under the p s e u d o n y m " U n
Q u i d a m . " Bello's Chilean disciples t o o k over the rest of the debate against
the Argentinian writer.
Like many Spanish A m e r i c a n literary debates before and since, this one
produced more heat than light, and w a s politically motivated. Sarmiento
saw Bello as an ally of the Chilean conservatives, and unfairly branded
him as neoclassical. In fact, both Bello and Sarmiento were romantic to
different degrees; Bello's poetic £tyle, as well as his sense of order and
rationality, were still neoclassical, but his ideas about language, literature,
and culture had been forged in close contact with the English R o m a n t i c s ,
w h o s e ideas were generally more innovative and radical than those of
their contemporaries in Europe. Sarmiento's R o m a n t i c i s m , in contrast,
w a s strongly French-influenced, and w a s regarded by Bello and his
supporters (also unfairly) as superficial and simply a cover for Sarmiento's
political liberalism and anti-Hispanism.
A b o v e and beyond his multifarious contributions to such fields as
p e d a g o g y , philosophy, l a w , political science, historiography, and the
natural sciences, Bello's contribution to the tradition of Spanish A m e r i c a n
literary criticism is threefold. First, he brought a greater awareness of the
historicity of language and, consequently, of literature. Second, he
brought into Spanish A m e r i c a the European romantic notion of literature
as a product of the fusion of human consciousness w i t h the natural
environment, w h i c h w o u l d henceforth become one of the basic tenets of
Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism. T h i r d , Bello conceived of literary
criticism as an instrument in the task of nation-building in w h i c h he, like
many others of his generation, had embarked.
A s A m a d o A l o n s o (1896-1952) has pointed out, Bello reacted in his
philological and grammatical studies against the "logico-generalist"
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concept of g r a m m a r that w a s c o m m o n a m o n g the Neoclassicists; for

Bello, as for the early G e r m a n romantic philologists such as Friedrich
Schlegel, Jakob G r i m m , and Franz B o p p , language w a s no longer studied
only in terms of a set of general, universal rules defined by an elite of
speakers, but rather in genetic terms. Bello, like his G e r m a n contemporar
ies, sought the origins of language and found them in the regionalistic,
often irrational, and archaic speech of the c o m m o n folk. Bello realized
that language has a history that can be traced through the study of
a n o n y m o u s and collective forms of literature such as epic poems and folk
ballads (the Spanish romances). T h i s is, in large measure, the impulse
behind his studies of the Cantar del Mío Cid, and is part of the ideology
underlying his Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los
americanos (1847).
T h i s latter w o r k also reflects Bello's " A m e r i c a n i s m " w h i c h , although
more moderate than Sarmiento's, also s h o w e d a desire to stress the
cultural particularities of the new Spanish A m e r i c a n nation that w a s
being born. Bello's w o r k is an example of h o w the modern concept of
" c u l t u r e " itself w a s produced by the R o m a n t i c s . Like his European
counterparts, Bello's concept of culture w a s based on a botanical, organic
metaphor: like a plant, culture arises out of obscure, telluric origins
(symbolized by seed and soil); rooted in history, it g r o w s and develops like
a living thing. Furthermore, in plant-like fashion, cultures seem to differ
according to the diverse geographic regions in w h i c h they arise. It is also
important that culture's g r o w t h and development is not chaotic and
unconstrained (like a cancer's) but bound by laws of symmetry and
differentiation like those that govern the production of branches, leaves,
flowers, and fruits in plants. T h e organic metaphor of culture w a s clearly
an attempt by the Romantics to reconcile change w i t h order, diversity
w i t h uniformity, historicity w i t h permanence.
Bello's w o r k reflects an early stage in the development of this metaphor
of culture, w h e n the arbitrariness of the metaphoric link can still be clearly
discerned. In his p o e m Alocución a la poesía, w h i c h may be considered
literary criticism in verse form, Bello apostrophizes Poetry and urges it to
abandon Europe in favor of the N e w W o r l d . In the latter, N a t u r e reigns
very nearly in its original state; Poetry can thus return to its pastoral,
telluric origins and be renewed. It is important to note the imperative tone
of Bello's text: the Alocución outlines a program for literary renewal that
is very much a product of the will and not a " n a t u r a l , " spontaneous
consequence of A m e r i c a ' s "rusticity." Later, in his letter in verse to José
Joaquín O l m e d o {Epístola escrita de Londres a París por un americano a
otro, 1827), Bello urges the Ecuadorian poet to "transplant Pindar's
laurels" to the " O c c i d e n t a l c l i m e s " where "pineapples and tamarinds
g r o w . " Bello is the first Spanish A m e r i c a n critic to define the uniqueness of
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Spanish A m e r i c a n literature in terms of its supposed links w i t h the flora,

fauna, and geography of the N e w W o r l d .
Considering his " A m e r i c a n i s m , " surprisingly little of Bello's criticism
is directly concerned w i t h the literature of the N e w W o r l d . T h e vast
majority of his critical articles and notes have to d o w i t h European writers
(from classical authors such as Virgil to contemporary Spanish and British
authors such as the D u q u e de R i v a s and Sir Walter Scott). His few critical
essays devoted to A m e r i c a n subjects deal w i t h José Joaquín O l m e d o ' s
p o e m La victoria de Junin: canto a Bolivar (1826), the poetry of José
M a r í a de Heredia (1803-1899), the p o e m Campaña del ejército republi-
cano al Brasil y triunfo de Ituzaingó (1827) by Juan C r u z Várela ( 1 7 9 4 -
1839), La Araucana (1569-1589) by A l o n s o de Ercilla (15 34-1594), an
1844 translation by Sarmiento of a devotional biography of Jesus, and
notes on an edition of the Historia de la conquista de México (1798) by
A n t o n i o Solís, and on Sarmiento's Viajes (1845—1847). O f course, not all
of Bello's literary criticism is found in his essays and notes; some of his
speeches, particularly his w e l l - k n o w n " D i s c u r s o pronunciado en la
instalación de la Universidad de Chile el día 17 de septimbre de 1 8 4 3 " of
w h i c h more will be said later), contain important critical pronounce-
ments, and w e have already commented on the criticism implicit in
Alocución a la poesía.
T h i s paucity of criticism by Bello on Spanish A m e r i c a n topics is
understandable if one considers that he spent much of his adult life
involved in political, pedagogical, and administrative duties. Signifi-
cantly, most of Bello's essays on Spanish A m e r i c a n w o r k s date from his
L o n d o n period, w h e n he had more time to engage in literary and scholarly
pursuits. It w o u l d have been interesting to k n o w Bello's opinion of w o r k s
by his contemporaries w h i c h w o u l d later become classics of Spanish
A m e r i c a n literature, such as El Periquillo Sarniento (1816) by José
Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi ( 1 7 7 6 - 1 8 2 7 ) , " E l m a t a d e r o " (1837) by
Esteban Echeverría (1805-1851), or Civilización y barbarie: vida de Juan
Facundo Quiroga (1845) by Sarmiento. H o w e v e r , w o r k s such as these had
limited diffusion in their time, and Bello's literary taste privileged poetry
over prose: it is unlikely that he w o u l d have recognized them as valid
subjects for criticism.
Nevertheless, Bello w a s a precursor in another area of Spanish A m e r i -
can literary studies w h i c h the Spanish A m e r i c a n R o m a n t i c s w o u l d
continue to develop: colonial literature. M o s t of the early Spanish
A m e r i c a n R o m a n t i c s w h o held liberal and anti-Hispanic ideas (as w a s the
case w i t h Sarmiento and the other Argentinian exiles from Juan M a n u e l
de R o s a s ' s dictatorship) v i e w e d the colonial period w i t h distaste, were not
interested in researching it, and saw little of value in the surviving texts
from that period. Bello's ideas, h o w e v e r , were more conservative, and he
433
strove for a balanced appreciation of Spain's role in Spanish A m e r i c a ' s

historical development. His essay on La Araucana is a m o n g the first
serious and positive evaluations of Ercilla's Renaissance epic of the
conquest of Chile. Bello's romantic historicism, w h i c h had already led
him to seek the origins of Spanish poetry in the popular romances and the
Cantar del Mío Cid, encouraged him to see in Ercilla's p o e m a literary
testimony of Chile's historical origins. For Bello, La Araucana w a s (in his
o w n words) " C h i l e ' s Aeneid," a foundational text ("La Araucana, por
D o n A l o n s o de Ercilla y Z ú ñ i g a , " 360). It should be noted that Bello places
La Araucana in its appropriate historico-literary context, as a Renais-
sance epic in the mold of A r i o s t o and T a s s o . H o w e v e r , Bello finds in
Ercilla's self-inclusion in the p o e m , as well as in his familiar and d o w n - t o -
earth tone, a prefiguration of the new aesthetic freedom brought by
R o m a n t i c i s m , w i t h its emphasis on naturalness and spontaneity.
R o m a n t i c i s m , A m e r i c a n i s m , and didacticism, A r t u r o Uslar Pietri (b.
1906) points out, are three constantly interlinked elements in Bello's
w o r k . Bello's didacticism w a s a normal consequence of his increased
involvement, during the latter half of his life, in the task of national
organization in Chile. Despite Bello's appreciation of colonial literature,
he felt that a radical historical break had occurred between the colonial
period and his o w n time, and that the new Spanish A m e r i c a n countries
were beginning their existence w i t h o u t a strong, clearly defined national
literary tradition. In literature, as in many other areas of national life,
everything w a s still to be done. T h e urgency of nation-building is reflected
in Bello's unfinished Compendio de la historia de la literatura (1850),
written as a t e x t b o o k for the significantly-named Instituto N a c i o n a l , as
well as in the pedagogical slant of many of his critical essays and in the
exhortations he directed to the students of the University of Chile in his
aforementioned " D i s c u r s o pronunciado en la instalación de la Universi-
dad de C h i l e . " In this serenely visionary speech, Bello lays out the role of
the University in the future development of Chilean culture. Regarding
literature, he urges the y o u n g Chilean writers to
write of matters worthy of your country and of posterity. Leave the soft
tones of the lyre of Anacreon and Sappho: the poetry of the nineteenth
century has a higher mission. Let the great interests of humanity inspire
you. Let your works pulsate with moral feeling... And, how many great
themes are not already shown to you by your young republic? Celebrate
its days of grandeur; weave garlands to its heroes; consecrate the burial
shroud of the martyrs of the Fatherland. (p. 20)
Bello's didacticism, as may be seen from the previous quote, is also

reflected in his style. F l o w i n g in diction, measured in its use of adjectives,
calm and reasonable in tone, Bello's style still bears the clear imprints of
434
Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment - w h i c h , paradoxically, make it

seem less dated than the colloquial, neologistic, and self-centered style of
younger R o m a n t i c s such as Sarmiento. It w a s this younger generation of
writers, many of w h o m were born during the W a r s of Independence, w h o
w o u l d continue to spread and intensify Bello's transitional critical legacy,
linking it (albeit polemically) to the liberal R o m a n t i c i s m of the Argenti
nian A s o c i a c i ó n de M a y o . Indeed, the major difference between Bello and
the younger R o m a n t i c s m a y well lie in style and language rather than in
basic concepts. T h e younger R o m a n t i c s were also more disposed to break
openly w i t h Hispanic tradition, although, because of the perceived lack of
a Spanish A m e r i c a n literary tradition, this led them to seek their literary
models in France. T h e reasons for their choice of France over England or
G e r m a n y were mainly linguistic and political; French w a s the only other
language that many of these writers k n e w , and they deeply sympathized
with the French tradition of antimonarchism and political liberalism. T h e
influential " D o g m a Socialista" (1837-1839), by Esteban Echevarría
(1805-1851), for e x a m p l e , s h o w s the impact of the social ideas of Henri de
Saint-Simon and the philosophy of V i c t o r C o u s i n .
Needless to say, literary criticism for the y o u n g Spanish A m e r i c a n
R o m a n t i c s w a s , even more than for Bello, an instrument in their task o f
creating a "national consciousness." It is thus not surprising to find that
the literary criticism of these writers - leaving aside the journalistic
polemics about R o m a n t i c i s m of the early 1840s - is predominantly
historiographic: literary history, biography, and bibliography, are its
preferred fields of inquiry. In many respects, Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism
until the 1880s resembled most closely - despite its French models — the
literary criticism of European countries like Italy, w h i c h w a s undergoing a
similar process of national unification. Until the modernist movement,
there were no theorists of literature in Spanish A m e r i c a comparable to
Edgar A l l a n Poe in the United States, much less to major English romantic
poet-critics such as W o r d s w o r t h or Coleridge. F r o m its beginnings, and
even after the rise of M o d e r n i s m , Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism w a s
- to use an economic phrase that seems appropriate in this context of
exchange - a "net importer" of critical methodologies arid ideologies.
W h a t is distinctly Spanish A m e r i c a n about this criticism, nevertheless, is
the particular rate at w h i c h foreign critical methods and ideas were
adopted, and their frequent transformation into empty rhetoric masking
the fundamental obsession of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism w i t h
nation-building.
W i t h i n the broadly historiographic nature of Spanish A m e r i c a n roman
tic criticism, a distinction should be made between critical w o r k s focused
on Spanish A m e r i c a n texts and those that focused on European literature
w i t h the aim of divulging the n e w standards of literary taste to Spanish
435
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE
A m e r i c a n readers and writers. In both cases, the aim w a s the same: to

establish a distinctly A m e r i c a n literary endeavor, although some critics
sought to d o this by means of the selective adaptation of European literary
fashions and others by researching the earliest literary manifestations of
the incipient Spanish A m e r i c a n identity.
A n instance of the former type of romantic criticism is found in the
w o r k of D o m i n g o D e l m o n t e in C u b a during the 1830s. A wealthy,
Dominican-descended member of the C r e o l e elite, D e l m o n t e had a
decidedly pedagogic inclination, and after his return to C u b a in 1829 from
a t w o - y e a r trip to Europe and the United States, he t o o k it upon himself to
educate and influence the C u b a n writers' literary taste. D e l m o n t e ' s
criticism w a s disseminated in H a v a n a journals such as La Moda, o Recreo
Semanal del Bello Sexo, Revista Bimestre Cubana (which he directed), El
Plantel, and El Aguinaldo Habanero, a m o n g others. In his articles,
D e l m o n t e informed readers about subjects such as the historical novels of
Sir Walter Scott and his Spanish imitators, about G o e t h e ' s Werther and
Balzac's Comedie humaine, about intellectual life in the United States
("Bosquejo intelectual de los Estados U n i d o s " ) , and — in a more general
vein - about " L a poesía en el siglo X I X , " and " L o s p o e t a s . " Y e t D e l m o n t e
w e n t even further and, as other Spanish A m e r i c a n critics then and n o w
have done, put his critical ideas into motion, through his editorship of the
Revista Bimestre Cubana, his letters to individual writers, and the
organization of a literary salon at his h o m e in H a v a n a (the "tertulia
delmontina"). His criticism w a s thus not merely descriptive or analytical
but, a b o v e all, prescriptive; like Echeverría in Argentina (although more
conservative politically), D e l m o n t e w a s a cultural promoter and innova
tor w h o succeeded in transporting elements of R o m a n t i c i s m to the
Hispanic C a r i b b e a n : his influence extended to Puerto R i c o , where
Alejandro T a p i a y Rivera (1826-1882) began his Biblioteca Histórica at
D e l m o n t e ' s suggestion. Like Bello in Chile, D e l m o n t e enjoined C u b a n
writers to write about " c o s a s c u b a n a s , " such as the C u b a n flora and
landscape, as well as social customs and problems, such as slavery.
D e l m o n t e w a s responsible in large part for the production of Spanish
A m e r i c a ' s only anti-slavery narratives, from Francisco. El Ingenio, o las
delicias del campo (1839) by A n s e l m o Suárez y R o m e r o (1818-1878), to
the remarkable Autobiografía (1835) by the slave Juan Francisco M a n
zano (1797—1854), a m o n g others.
O n the other hand, the most outstanding representative of the literary-
historical tendency of Spanish A m e r i c a n romantic criticism is the Argenti
nian Juan M a r í a Gutiérrez. M a n y other critics, of course, produced w o r k s
of national literary history, such as Juicios críticos sobre algunos poetas
hispanoamericanos (1859) by t w o of Bello's disciples, the Chilean
436
brothers M i g u e l Luis (1828-1888) and G r e g o r i o V i c t o r A m u n á t e g u i

(1830-1899), Ojeada histórico-crítica sobre la poesía ecuatoriana (1868)
by Juan L e ó n M e r a (1832—1894), Historia de la literatura en Nueva
Granada (1868) by José M a r í a V e r g a r a y V e r g a r a ( 1 8 3 1 - 1 8 7 2 ) , Historia
de la literatura colonial de Chile (1878) by T o r i b i o M e d i n a ( 1 8 5 2 - 1 9 3 1 ) ,
and Recuerdos literarios (1878) by the Chilean José V i c t o r i n o Lastarria
(1817-1888). Nevertheless, it is probably Juan M a r í a Gutiérrez w h o
singlehandedly did most to stimulate the romantic return to the colonial
period. After publishing his ambitious anthology of contemporary poets,
América poética, in 1846, Gutiérrez broke w i t h the n a r r o w Americanism
of his friend Echeverría (who had categorically stated in his " D o g m a
socialista" that "the social emancipation of A m e r i c a shall only be
obtained by repudiating the colonial heritage that Spain left u s " ) , and,
true to the R o m a n t i c s ' historicist impulse, proceeded to re-edit and study
the Renaissance epic El Arauco domado (1596) by the C r e o l e disciple of
Ercilla, Pedro de O ñ a (1570-1643?). T h i s w a s f o l l o w e d by a series of
groundbreaking studies of such notable colonial writers as Sor Juana Inés
de la C r u z (1648-1695), Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo (1663-1743), Juan del
Valle y Caviedes {i6$z}-i69j}), and Pablo de O l a v i d e (1725—1804),
collected in Estudios biográficos y críticos sobre algunos poetas sudameri-
canos anteriores al siglo XIX.
Gutierrez's interest in colonial writers clearly reflects his desire to
bridge the perceived historical divide between the colonial period and the
new Spanish A m e r i c a n nations; it is an attempt to provide Spanish
A m e r i c a n literature w i t h historical roots (to use an organic metaphor of
w h i c h the R o m a n t i c s were fond) by searching for w o r t h y literary
precursors of C r e o l e lineage in colonial letters. A l l his studies have to d o
w i t h Creole writers, and are designed to s h o w h o w , despite Spanish
intellectual repression, the native-born intellectuals w e r e able to produce
valuable literary and scholarly w o r k s .
In a striking passage of his " A d v e r t e n c i a preliminar" in his Estudios
biográficos y críticos, Gutiérrez compares his research to that of the
paleontologists:
Our colonial biography is a new paleontology whose elements lie

hidden in the depths of an unexplored world. Its beings remain
unstudied and unclassified, and are only found in fragments under
dense layers of indifference and oblivion, to such a degree that however
great the care taken in their restoration there is the danger of bringing to
the surface skeletons without life or flesh. I have tried to avoid this
inconvenience, whenever possible, by placing the characters I study in
relation with their epochs, their contemporaries, and the social deve-
lopment of the [Spanish] Metropolis, because for me the portrait is less
437
important than the background, in my attempt to clarify the moral and

intellectual aspects of the old regime.
("Estudios historico-criticos sobre la literatura en Sud-América," 42)
H o w e v e r , despite the seemingly positivistic allusion to that nascent

science w h o s e romantic founders were G e o r g e s C u v i e r and Louis Agassiz,
Gutierrez's method o w e s less to paleontology than to the early " s o c i o -
literary" and historicist approaches of M a d a m e de Staël (in De la
littérature considérée dans les rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800)
and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve. His essays therefore a b o u n d in
broad, picturesque, almost novelistic recreations of life and customs
during the colonial period, often reminiscent of the Tradiciones peruanas
that the Peruvian R i c a r d o Palma began to publish around i860.
Like Palma, Gutierrez also turned the colonial period into an analogue
of Europe's M i d d l e A g e s ; in his 1871 essay, "Estudios historico-criticos
sobre la literatura en S u d - A m é r i c a , " he referred to "the Middle Age of the
colonial r e g i m e . " T h e reasons for this interpretation are clearly linked to
Gutierrez's models in romantic historicism. Liberal romantic historiogra
phy, w h o s e narrative providentialism required that historical processes
have definite beginnings and endings, taught that the nations of Europe
had originated from popular, agrarian, and vernacular roots during the
M i d d l e A g e s . Concurrently, romantic philology affirmed that the old epic
poems and chansons de geste, such as the Cantar del Mio Cid and the
Chanson de Roland were the early expressions of a g r o w i n g "national
consciousness." Like Bello in his analysis of La Araucana, Gutierrez's
" M e d i e v a l i z a t i o n " of the colonial period arises from his search for
A m e r i c a n historical origins parallel to those of Europe. Gutierrez's v i e w
of the colonial period therefore s h o w s little sensitivity to the peculiarities
of N e w W o r l d history as well as to the baroque period in European and
A m e r i c a n cultural history. Despite his praise of Sor Juana and of Peralta
Barnuevo, Gutierrez w a s essentially anti-baroque in attitude. P o m p o u s
pageantry, allied to religious obscurantism and political oppression, were
for Gutierrez the hallmarks of the colonial period; significantly, he refers
to it as " a sort of C a r n i v a l in w h i c h the most serious acts in the lives of a
people t o o k on a histrionic and theatrical aspect, that w a s at once
ridiculous and pedantic." A s w e shall see, some aspects of this v i e w w o u l d
remain unchanged - despite a more sympathetic appreciation of the
Baroque - in the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism of the 1930s and
1940s.
A l t h o u g h Bello brought the new romantic philology to Spanish A m e r
ica, where it w a s adopted by the literary critics mentioned a b o v e , as well
as by linguists such as the C o l o m b i a n s M i g u e l A n t o n i o C a r o (1843-1909)
and Rufino José C u e r v o ( 1 8 4 4 - 1 9 1 1 ) , it w a s not until the latter third of the
438
nineteenth century that the deeper philosophical implications of romantic

philology for the study of language and culture began to be assimilated by
Spanish A m e r i c a n poets and prose writers. Spanish A m e r i c a n writers of
the late 1870s and 1880s entered a process of professionalization w h i c h led
them to seek higher artistic standards and a more rigorous use of language
and ideas. T h i s w a s due in general to the increasing prosperity and
political stability of Spanish A m e r i c a t o w a r d s the end of the nineteenth
century, but also, more specifically, to the g r o w i n g prestige of science and
technology in Western culture as a w h o l e , a prestige w h i c h found
systematic expression in the philosophy of Positivism.
T h e neoclassical ideal of linguistic transparency, of language as an
unobtrusive medium of c o m m u n i c a t i o n for ideas, as well as its opposite,
the early romantic fondness for Americanisms and folk expressions
(which had figured in the polemic between Bello and Sarmiento in the
1840s), gave w a y t o w a r d the 1870s to a more sophisticated notion of
language as a human artifact, as a thing a m o n g others in the w o r l d ,
e n d o w e d with its o w n historical depth and an almost palpable materi
ality. A s José M a r t i declared in a memorable fragment from his unpub
lished n o t e b o o k s of 1880:
There is in words a layer that enfolds them, which is their use: one must,
however, go to their very substance (ir basta el cuerpo de ellas). In this
examination, something breaks^ and one sees into the depths. Words
must be used as they are seen in their depths, in their real, etymological,
and primitive signification, which is the only robust one, and which
assures permanence to the ideas expressed in them. Words must be
bright as gold, light as wings, solid as marble.
(Obras completas, x i v : 450)
T h i s vision of language as an object (frequently, a precious object) led

logically to a notion of culture as artifice. Unlike the R o m a n t i c s , the
Modernists did not view national culture as a process of spontaneous,
natural generation from obscure, folkloric roots. W i t h o u t forsaking
altogether the organic metaphors of romantic philology, the Modernists,
like their French symbolist and "decadentist" counterparts, regarded
national culture (including literature and the arts) as highly refined end-
products of a laborious and deliberate historical process. T h i s idea of
culture is best summarized by a quote from a speech by Ernest R e n a n
found in one of M a r t i ' s "Escenas e u r o p e a s " (1884): " H u m a n history is
not a chapter in Z o o l o g y . M a n is a rational and moral being. Free will
stands above the base influence of the Volksgeist. A nation is a soul, a
spiritual principle created out of the past, with its life in the present, and
any great assemblage of men of sound minds and generous hearts can
create the moral consciousness that constitutes a n a t i o n . "
439
R e n a n , as philologist and writer, w a s dear to the hearts of the

Modernists (in a w a y that other philologists, including the Spaniard
M a r c e l i n o M e n é n d e z y Pelayo, were not), because of his sensitivity to this
vision of culture as an artifact. T h e Modernists also admired Renan's
cultivated prose style, his antipositivism, and his sympathy for turn-of-
the-century aestheticism. In their journalistic chronicles, essays, and
prologues, as well as in their literary w o r k s , the modernist poets defended,
to varying degrees, the dignity and a u t o n o m y of art vis-á-vis politics and
science. T h i s attitude w a s frequently misunderstood as pure aestheticism,
or "art for art's s a k e , " but it in fact simply reflected the M o d e r n i s t s ' desire
to systematize their k n o w l e d g e about art and literature and raise the
contemporary standard of taste.
Y e t , even as the Spanish A m e r i c a n poets and narrators were s h o w i n g a
greater concern with form and adopting a more sophisticated notion of
language in their w o r k s , the critics were m o v i n g t o w a r d a deterministic
and moralizing approach that rarely addressed literary form. Unlike the
M o d e r n i s t s ' literary w o r k s , w h i c h evidenced an acceptance of philology
but a rejection of Positivism, the literary criticism of that period (including
that written by modernist authors) w a s instead powerfully influenced by
the positivist approach to literature of H i p p o l y t e T a i n e , w h i c h focused on
the extrinsic aspects of the literary w o r k according to his w e l l - k n o w n
formula: " r a c e , milieu, m o m e n t . " Despite his rejection of many key
positivist notions, T a i n e , as Rene Wellek has argued, " w a s a positivist in a
w i d e and loose sense. T h e w o r s h i p of the natural sciences and their
methods points in this direction: seen in the w i d e perspective of X l X t h -
century intellectual history, T a i n e seems to belong to the reaction against
early idealism. . . H e is certainly imbued w i t h the psychological and
biological ideas of his t i m e " (A History of Modern Criticism, iv: 3 5 ) .
H o w e v e r , as Wellek also points out, the basic framework of ideas
underlying T a i n e ' s approach to literature is Hegelian. T a i n e ' s concept of
history, like Hegel's, is a cyclical process of dynamic change. A l s o
Hegelian are his contentions that great art is both "representative" of its
age and nation and the expression of individual personality, and his
tendency to seek "ideal t y p e s " in fictional characters.
T h e source of T a i n e ' s attraction for Spanish A m e r i c a n critics is not
difficult to discern. Unlike Ernest Renan, w h o rejected Positivism's claim
to have achieved a thorough systematization of k n o w l e d g e and studied
mostly the literatures of antiquity and the Orient, T a i n e studied European
literature and provided his readers with a seemingly systematic critical
vocabulary w i t h w h i c h to approach more familiar and contemporary
texts. His implicit Hegelianism w a s probably another source of interest,
given the Spanish A m e r i c a n writers' constant preoccupation w i t h their
national history and its place in a broader historical scheme.
440
M o s t of the literary criticism produced by the modernist poets intended

to communicate, in an unsystematic manner, the new aesthetic values and
ideas about language and literature endorsed by the Modernists. T h i s
criticism w a s contained in their newspaper chronicles, and therefore
tended to be journalistic and superficial. M o r e o v e r , despite their formalis-
tic inclinations, the modernist poets (as well as the professional critics of
the period) were often hampered by the lack of a rigorous terminology for
literary analysis. Aside from the jargon of verse theory in w h i c h some
w r o t e treatises on versification, such as Leyes de la versificación castellana
t n e
(1912) by R i c a r d o Jaimes Freyre (1868-1933), M o d e r n i s t s ' critical
vocabulary w a s surprisingly p o o r . Furthermore, their frequent use of
elaborate poetic images to describe literary phenomena made their
criticism impressionistic. T h u s , even the major modernist poets, such as
José M a r t i and R u b é n D a r í o , found it difficult to avoid the use of T a i n e a n
concepts in their critical writings.
T h e famous conceptual triad of race, milieu, and moment that T a i n e
introduced in his Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1864) appears in many
of the modernist poets' statements about the relation between literature
and society. " E a c h stage of society brings its o w n expression to literature;
in such a w a y , that by the diverse phases of their literature the story of
nations might be told w i t h greater truth than through their chronicles and
annals," declared José M a r t í in his 1887 essay, " W a l t W h i t m a n . " For his
part, R u b é n D a r í o , even as he criticized the notion of environmental
influences, could not avoid using it in his essay on Edgar A l l a n Poe in his
b o o k L o s raros: " P o e , like Ariel in human form, seems to have spent his
life under the spell of a strange mystery. Born in a country where life is
materialistic and practical, the influence of his environment w o r k e d a
contrary effect on him. Such a stupendous imagination arose in a country
of numbers and reason."
Nevertheless, in general, the critical writings of the great modernist
poets had propagandistic, manifesto-like qualities; they attempted less to
elucidate literary w o r k s than to p r o m o t e the modernist aesthetic. Such is
the case with M a r t i ' s prologue to Poema del Niágara (1882) by Juan
A n t o n i o Pérez Bonalde (1846-1892), w h i c h in style and ideas outshines
the rather pedestrian p o e m it precedes. D a r i o ' s choice of authors studied
in his collection of literary essays Los raros follows the same intention of
outlining the modernist creed rather than producing a w o r k of literary
history or theory. It profiles major figures such as Poe, Verlaine, Ibsen,
M a r t í , and - in a truly prescient essay - Lautréamont, as well as secondary
writers such as Laurent T a i l h a d e and Jean Richepin, all of w h o m seem to
have in c o m m o n only their " o d d i t y , " their distance from the literary
mainstream.
A n important departure in the modernist poets' criticism exhibited in
441
Los raros (as well as in other texts) is their w e l l - k n o w n " c o s m o p o l i t a n "

attitude. A t least until the Spanish(Cuban)American W a r of 1898, the
Modernists were less concerned than their romantic precursors with using
literature as an instrument of "nation-building." T h e y were less inter
ested in " b u i l d i n g " countries than " b u i l d i n g " Literature (with a capital
" L " ) . T h e exception that proves the rule is, of course, M a r t i , but even he
understood the hierarchical difference between the political and the
literary spheres, as the following, much-quoted passage from his note
b o o k s attests: " T h e r e is no writing, w h i c h is a form of expression, until
there is an essence to be expressed by it. N o r will there be Spanish
A m e r i c a n literature until there is - Spanish A m e r i c a . "
M a r t i ' s w o r d s also prefigure the M o d e r n i s t s ' main contribution, after
the crisis of 1898, to the ideological b a c k g r o u n d of Spanish A m e r i c a n
criticism: the search for a c o m p a c t , clear-cut concept of Spanish A m e r i c a n
culture (an "essence," in M a r t i ' s terms) from w h i c h Spanish A m e r i c a n
writing springs, and through w h i c h Spanish A m e r i c a n writing assures its
uniqueness and originality. In his essay " N u e s t r a A m é r i c a " (1891) -
w h i c h is not a w o r k of literary criticism, strictly speaking - M a r t i
proposed a theory of culture w h i c h synthesized the romantic idea of
culture as an emanation of N a t u r e , w i t h the concept of culture as artifice
posited by Renan. For M a r t i , Spanish A m e r i c a n culture is the product of a
clash between the Europeans' w i l l p o w e r and A m e r i c a n N a t u r e (within
w h i c h M a r t i also includes the A m e r i c a n Indians). T h i s clash has produced
deformities in Spanish A m e r i c a n culture w h i c h must be corrected by
seeking a harmony and balance with N a t u r e . T o seek such harmony is for
M a r t i a supremely poetic, creative act: " T o be a ruler, in a n e w nation, is
to be a creator." T h i s culturally deterministic theory of Spanish A m e r i c a n
literature, w h i c h still echoed in the w o r k s of the telluric critics of the
1930s, w a s further developed and disseminated, as will be seen shortly, by
José Enrique R o d ó .
T h e professional critics during the modernist period, as said before,
were even more visibly influenced by the positivistic critical style of T a i n e
than the poet-critics, although most drifted a w a y from it during the early
years of the twentieth century. A g o o d e x a m p l e is the C u b a n Enrique José
V a r o n a , w h o s e Positivism led him to oppose the modernist aesthetic.
T a i n e ' s strong influence is evident in V a r o n a ' s Estudios literarios y
filosóficos and Seis conferencias, but gradually V a r o n a grew disenchanted
w i t h T a i n e ' s propensity t o w a r d generalization and dogmatism. V a r o n a ' s
later critical writings, collected in Desde mi belvedere and Violetas y
ortigas, s h o w a moderately aestheticist attitude t o w a r d literature and a
skepticism t o w a r d all forms of d o g m a that is more reminiscent of the
w o r k s of Ernest Renan.
In the literary criticism of Argentina at the turn of the century, a more
442
direct French presence w a s provided by Paul G r o u s s a c . A French immi-

grant w h o became a Spanish-speaking intellectual and Director of
Argentina's N a t i o n a l Library, G r o u s s a c set to the task of correcting w h a t
he s a w as the rhetorical excesses of the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary idiom,
p r o m o t i n g instead the French ideals of clarity and precision. A l t h o u g h in
many w a y s his reformist attitude t o w a r d language w a s similar to that of
the Modernists, G r o u s s a c w a s in other respects a confirmed " A m e r i c a n -
ist" (as his novel Fruto vedado [1884] and his travel essays in Del Fiata al
Niagara [1887] attest), and he frequently derided D a r i o and the M o d e r -
nists. T h i s did not prevent G r o u s s a c , h o w e v e r , from publishing in his
journal La Biblioteca (founded in 1896) one of D a r i o ' s major p o e m s ,
" C o l o q u i o de los c e n t a u r o s . " G r o u s s a c ' s critical m e t h o d o l o g y w a s
strongly influenced by T a i n e , but there are echoes of R e n a n in his concern
with stylistic purity (both in Spanish and French); as D a r i o noted,
"sometimes there sings in him a nightingale that is not heard in the
mountains of T a i n e " (Obras completas, 11: 169).
R e n a n and T a i n e , romantic philology and positivist literary history,
were both incorporated and to a certain extent reconciled, in the w o r k of
the foremost Spanish A m e r i c a n critic of the turn of the century, the
n e
U r u g u a y a n José Enrique R o d o . A l t h o u g h in 1895 co-founded a journal
w i t h a positivist-sounding title, the Revista National de Literatura y
Ciencias Sociales, R o d o w a s sympathetic to the M o d e r n i s t s ' aestheticism.
Indeed, his first important essay, " E l que v e n d r à " (1896) is a lyrical and —
paradoxically - rather detached meditation on the different attitudes
taken by turn-of-the-century writers t o w a r d the feeling of " d e c a d e n c e "
that w a s widespread in Western culture. R e n a n anctTaine are mentioned
together in that essay because of their c o m m o n interest in - to use R o d ó ' s
terms - the " C u l t of T r u t h . " T h e essay, w h i c h ends w i t h a call for a n e w
artistic leadership, for a sort of literary M e s s i a h , is preceded by an
epigraph from R e n a n ("Une immense attente remplit les àmes") and its
style is evocative of the French philologist's famous "Prière sur l ' A c r o -
p o l e " (1876). A veneration of R e n a n is evident in R o d ó ' s w o r k up to and
including Ariel, but, as Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l points out ( R o d o , Obras
completas, 1 1 9 ) , R o d o gradually distanced himself from R e n a n because of
the latter's extreme political skepticism in his later years and R o d ó ' s
increasing " A m e r i c a n i s m . "
O n the other hand, throughout R o d ó ' s critical w o r k , the T a i n e a n
emphasis on environmental determinism, as well as his concept of
"representative" artists, reappear. T w o of R o d ó ' s best critical essays,
"Juan M a r i a Gutierrez y su è p o c a " and " M o n t a l v o " (both from 1913)
follow T a i n e ' s method of historico-literary reconstruction. Significantly,
in his w e l l - k n o w n essay on " R u b e n D a r i o . Su personalidad literaria. Su
ùltima o b r a " (1899), R o d o criticizes the N i c a r a g u a n poet's fascination
443
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF L A T I N A M E R I C A N LITERATURE
w i t h Decadentism in Prosas prof anas w i t h the assertion " N o es el poeta de

A m e r i c a ; " in other w o r d s , denying D a r i o ' s status as an artist representa
tive of his time and place. It should be pointed out, h o w e v e r , that many
other critics were a m o n g R o d o ' s models; a m o n g them, Juan M a r i a
Gutierrez, the Spaniards M a r c e l i n o M e n e n d e z y Pelayo, Juan V a l e r a , the
Countess Pardo B a z a n , and Clarin, and the Frenchmen Sainte-Beuve,
Marie-Jean G u y a u , Ferdinand Brunetiere, A n a t o l e France, and Paul de
Saint-Victor.
R o d o ' s w o r k , like that of any other writer, cannot of course be reduced
to a mere interplay of influences. L e a v i n g aside his extremely important
role as a "cultural critic" (in today's terminology) in w o r k s such as Ariel
and Motivos de Proteo [The Motives of Proteus], R o d o ' s originality in the
history of Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism lies in his belief that
criticism is a form of artistic creation, and that as such, it is w o r t h y of
special respect. For R o d o , criticism w a s not merely a belletristic pastime
or a covert w a y to discuss politics, but (in his words) "the most vast and
c o m p l e x of literary g e n r e s " (Obras, 169). T h e ideal critic, according to
R o d o in his posthumous Ultimos Motivos de Proteo, is a homo duplex
w h o is capable of intuitively identifying w i t h the w o r k of art and of re
creating it by means of commentary and paraphrase, while simulta
neously judging the value of the w o r k dispassionately.
R o d o ' s insistence on criticism's artistic side should not be understood
simply as an attempt to purposely blur the distinction between criticism
and fiction, but as a statement of criticism's inherent value. T e r m s such as
" a r t " and "artistic" had connotations at the turn of the century w h i c h
were s o m e w h a t different from those pj- today, and w h e n R o d o speaks of
an "artistic" criticism he is referring not only to an unfathomable
" c r e a t i v e " element, but also to the intellectual precision and stylistic
polish he felt criticism should have - to w h a t today w e w o u l d call
"professionalism." R o d o did more than any other Modernist to exalt
literary criticism to its full dignity as an a u t o n o m o u s discipline. It w a s his
respect for the " p u r i t y " of criticism that led him to avoid placing it, as his
R o m a n t i c predecessors had done, fully in the service of a "national
consciousness." W h e n R o d o , like many other Modernists after 1898, felt
the need to define once more the nature of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, he
did so in w o r k s of "cultural criticism" such as Ariel, Motivos de Proteo,
and Tiber alismo y jacobinismo (1906), rather than in w o r k s of strictly
literary criticism and scholarship.
T h e rather strict distinction R o d o wished to maintain between cultural
criticism and literary criticism tends to break d o w n , of course, w h e n his
w o r k and that of other modernist critics is more closely scrutinized. T h e
g n a w i n g question that underlies most Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism since
Bello is that of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature's uniqueness and originality.
444
A t least since M a r t i and R o d ó , this uniqueness is traced to the peculiarity

of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture vis-á-vis that of Europe. In R o d ó ' s critical
w o r k , for e x a m p l e , one can see, as in the other Modernists, t w o phases: a
" c o s m o p o l i t a n " and an " A m e r i c a n i s t " one. Until the crisis of 1898, R o d ó ,
like D a r í o , seemed to regard Spanish A m e r i c a mainly as a b a c k w a r d
province of European culture; the problem for Spanish A m e r i c a n litera
ture seemed to be h o w to " c a t c h u p " w i t h the literature of the "civilized
nations." After 1898, h o w e v e r , R o d ó and the other Modernists m o v e d to
a position similar to that of M a r t i in the aforementioned quotes from his
n o t e b o o k and in essays such as " N u e s t r a A m é r i c a " : Spanish A m e r i c a n
literature's uniqueness lay in the harmonious and creative interaction
between a Europeanized consciousness and the N a t u r e and indigenous
peoples of A m e r i c a . (The fact that such harmony w a s virtually nonexis
tent did not prevent the Modernists from making it their ultimate goal.)
T h i s is essentially w h a t R o d ó preached in Ariel, although, being from the
more Europeanized River Plate region, he paid virtually no heed to the
Indians, emphasizing instead the vision of a "regenerated A m e r i c a " (in his
words) based on a fusion - achieved by a y o u n g and educated elite - of
Hispanic and French culture in the ideal of " L a t i n i t y . "
Other modernist critics in the early years of the century f o l l o w e d
R o d ó ' s lead. T h e Venezuelan Rufino Blanco F o m b o n a ' s w o r k , for
instance, evidences the almost-missionary zeal and broad " A m e r i c a n i s t "
perspective implicit in R o d ó ' s " A r i e l i s m , " as some of his titles attest:
Letras y letrados de hispanoamérica, Grandes escritores de América, and
El modernismo y los poetas modernistas. T h e name of the highly
successful publishing house Blanco F o m b o n a founded in M a d r i d in 1 9 1 4
is equally telling: Editorial A m é r i c a . T w o of its main series of publications
were the "Biblioteca Andrés B e l l o , " w h i c h published Spanish A m e r i c a n
literary w o r k s , and the "Biblioteca A y a c u c h o , " devoted mostly to
nineteenth-century Spanish A m e r i c a n history.
Less ambitious but no less tenacious in their desire to p r o m o t e a
renewed " A m e r i c a n i s m " w i t h o u t losing touch w i t h the European cultural
legacy were critics such as the C o l o m b i a n B a l d o m e r o Sanín C a n o and the
Peruvian Ventura G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n . Sanín C a n o , like Bello, had lived for a
long period in G r e a t Britain (he taught Spanish language and literature at
Edinburgh University). Perfectly bilingual in Spanish and English, he
collaborated in the Modern English Review. O n his return to C o l o m b i a ,
he found time after his duties as Minister of Finance to write the brief and
elegant essays of cultural and literary criticism collected in La civilización
manual. Ventura G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n , on the other hand, exemplified the
" P a n - L a t i n " link w i t h France. A long-time resident of Paris, he began
writing " c h r o n i c l e s " in Spanish in the style of Enrique G ó m e z Carrillo
(1873—1927). M a n y of his narrative w o r k s were written directly in French.
445
A m o n g his salient w o r k s dealing with Spanish A m e r i c a n literature are:

Literatura peruana and Semblanzas de America. G a r c í a C a l d e r ó n ' s
criticism, like Blanco F o m b o n a ' s or Sanin C a n o ' s , frequently consisted of
"profiles" and review essays of contemporary Spanish A m e r i c a n writers,
w h i c h were meant to p r o m o t e the synthesis of " A m e r i c a n i s m " and
European aestheticism that lay at the core of R o d ó ' s call to renew Spanish
A m e r i c a n culture.
T h e telluric period in Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism springs directly from

this turn-of-the-century desire for cultural renewal. A great many histori-
cal and cultural events form the turbulent b a c k g r o u n d to this criticism;
historical events such as the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n (which began in 1910),
the First W o r l d W a r ( 1 9 1 4 - 1 9 1 8 ) , the Russian R e v o l u t i o n (which began in
1 9 1 7 ) , and the Spanish Civil W a r (1936-1939), plus the numerous United
States interventions in the C a r i b b e a n and Central A m e r i c a until the 1950s,
w h i c h fanned the flames of nationalism; cultural events such as the myriad
avant-garde movements that arose between the first and third decades of
this century, from Futurism to Surrealism, as well as the rise of n e w
political, social, and philosophical ideologies, from Leninism to p s y c h o a -
nalysis to Existentialism. A l r e a d y in the early years of the twentieth
century, the Modernists had remarked on an apparent "speeding u p " of
the historical process; technological, social, and epistemological change
seemed to be gaining m o m e n t u m . Such rapid change produced in the
Spanish A m e r i c a n intellectuals feelings of uncertainty, rather than exhila-
ration, and gave greater urgency to the " A m e r i c a n i s t " project initiated by
M a r t i and R o d ó .
T h e continuity between the late-modernist approach to the problema-
tic of Spanish A m e r i c a n culture and that of the Telluric critics is evident at
every level: from the titles of their b o o k s and essays to the cultural
institutions they founded. T w o of the major critics of this period, the
M e x i c a n A l f o n s o Reyes and the D o m i n i c a n Pedro Henríquez Ureña, were
a m o n g the founders of the " A r i e l i s t " A t e n e o de la Juventud on the eve of
the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n ; there, along w i t h the philosopher A n t o n i o C a s o
(1884-1946) w h o gave lectures criticizing Positivism (which had become
the official ideology of Porfirio D i a z ' s dictatorship), Henríquez Ureña
lectured on " L a obra de José Enrique R o d ó . " Reyes's early b o o k of essays,
Cuestiones estéticas, bears the stamp of R o d ó , and his famous Visión de
Anáhuac resembles the vivid and colorful recreation of M e x i c o ' s indige-
nous past in M a r t i ' s essay, " L a s ruinas indias," from his children's
magazine, La Edad de Oro (1889). A l s o , echoing the evocation of G r e c o -
R o m a n culture in the poetry of M a n u e l Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895) and
D a r í o , the w o r k s of the " A t e n e í s t a s " s h o w a considerable familiarity
with, and admiration, of the G r e e k and R o m a n classics, as may be seen in
446
Reyes's play, Ifigenia cruel (1924), and his Discurso por Virgilio, and in
many passages of Henríquez Ureña's critical essays. T h e Latinism and
Hellenism of these writers, their emphasis on a solid k n o w l e d g e of
classical literature, as well as being a modernist inheritance, w a s a
s y m p t o m of the telluric critics' insistence on returning to the origins of
western culture.
A s o m e w h a t different attitude w a s s h o w n by the Peruvian José C a r l o s
Mariátegui, the first major M a r x i s t critic in Spanish A m e r i c a . A l t h o u g h ,
as w e shall see, Mariátegui shares many ideas w i t h the other less
politically radical telluric critics, he openly repudiated the modernist
legacy, to w h i c h he nevertheless o w e d his formation as a writer; "Since
1 9 1 8 , " he states in a 1927 letter, "nauseated by Creole politics, I resolutely
oriented myself t o w a r d Socialism, breaking w i t h my early literary
attempts, that had been tainted with the turn-of-the-century Decadentism
and Byzantinism w h i c h were then at their height." It should be recalled
that a streak of " u t o p i a n S o c i a l i s m " runs through the writings of many
Spanish A m e r i c a n liberal R o m a n t i c s and Modernists, from Alberdi's
Saint-Simonian A s o c i a c i ó n de M a y o to M a r t i . M a r x i a n Socialism, h o w -
ever, along with anarchism, arrived in Spanish A m e r i c a at the end of the
nineteenth century, brought by European immigrants; already by the
1890s there were "socialist c l u b s " in all the major Spanish A m e r i c a n
capitals, from M e x i c o City to Buenos Aires.
T h e Modernists had also prefigured the telluric critics' sympathetic
approach to Spain. T h e renewed appreciation of Spain's cultural heritage
had begun with M a r t i , w h o s e style bears a baroque imprint and w h o ,
despite being the leader of an anticolonial struggle against Spain, made
frequent allusions to the colonial period and the Siglo de O r o . It w a s
further dramatized by R u b é n D a r í o ' s triumphant trip to the Spanish
peninsula in 1892. In the cases of Reyes and Henríquez Ureña, the
vicissitudes of exile and the profession of diplomacy t o o k them to Spain
during the early decades of the century and a l l o w e d them to establish
fruitful ties w i t h Spanish intellectuals of the time, from the noventaiochis-
tas M i g u e l de U n a m u n o , A n t o n i o M a c h a d o , and A z o r í n , to the y o u n g e r
writers such as José O r t e g a y Gasset and Juan R a m o n Jimenez, and
philologists such as R a m ó n M e n é n d e z Pidal. T h e " H i s p a n o p h i l i a " of the
telluric critics, manifested in b o o k s such as Henríquez Ureña's En la orilla
de mi España (1922) and Plenitude de España (1940), Reyes's Cuestiones
gongorinas,Las vísperas de España (1937), and Tertulia de Madrid
(1949), and the Venezuelan M a r i a n o Picón Salas's Buscando el camino
(1920) and Europa-América: preguntas a la esfinge de la cultura, w a s not
merely a consequence of their personal contacts (although this w a s
important) but also part and parcel of their critical ideology; the return to
the Spanish roots w a s an integral part of the search for A m e r i c a ' s roots.
447
1910 w a s a watershed year for the telluric critics, not only because it
witnessed the beginning of the M e x i c a n R e v o l u t i o n , but also because it
w a s the first in a series of anniversaries marking the various stages of the
struggle for Spanish A m e r i c a ' s independence. T h e various centennials of
the W a r s of Independence c o m m e m o r a t e d from 1 9 1 0 to the 1930s were
also important elements in the ideological b a c k g r o u n d of the telluric
critics. Spanish A m e r i c a w a s already 100 years old: w h a t had been
achieved, these critics asked. After a century of travails and progress, w a s
there a truly Spanish A m e r i c a n identity? A n d had this identity been clearly
reflected by Spanish A m e r i c a n literature?
In several key b o o k s , the major telluric critics presented remarkably
similar views of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature and its relation to N e w
W o r l d society and culture. A m o n g these b o o k s are w o r k s by Pedro
Henríquez Ureña ranging from Seis ensayos en busca de nuestra expresión
to the posthumous Historia de la cultura en la América Hispánica, José
C a r l o s M a r i á t e g u i ' s 7 ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana
[Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality], Alfonso Reyes's Ultima
Tule, and M a r i a n o Picón Salas's De la Conquista a la Independencia: tres
siglos de historia cultural hispanoamericana. [A Cultural History of
Spanish America: from Conquest to Independence].
In many w a y s , the telluric critics' notion of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature
w a s a distillation of the romantic and late-modernist vision, to w h i c h w a s
added a leavening 6f philosophical Vitalism (from Henri Bergson to
O s w a l d Spengler), as well as a strong emphasis on erudition and
scholarship. For these critics, Spanish A m e r i c a n literature w a s a unique
product of the culture of Spanish A m e r i c a . T h i s culture, in turn, despite
regional differences, w a s assumed to be a coherent entity w h i c h derived its
uniqueness, its difference, from a deep-seated harmony with N e w W o r l d
N a t u r e . T r u e to its romantic b a c k g r o u n d , this theory w a s also highly
historicist in character: Spanish A m e r i c a n culture and literature did not
arise fully formed once the first mestizos were born from their Spanish and
Indian parents. Instead, in a basically Hegelian scheme, the telluric critics
saw Spanish A m e r i c a n literature as the testimony of a process of gradual
self-knowledge w h i c h eventually gave rise to an " A m e r i c a n e x p r e s s i o n "
(to use a phrase from Henríquez Ureña later taken up by L e z a m a L i m a in
La expresión americana). In his aforementioned b o o k , Mariátegui sum-
marized the stages in the development of Spanish A m e r i c a n literature as:
"4 colonial period, a cosmopolitan period, and a national period. D u r i n g
the first, a people are in terms of their literature nothing but a colony, a
dependency of another. D u r i n g the second, they assimilate simulta-
neously elements of diverse foreign literatures. In the third, their o w n
personality and their o w n feelings achieve a well-modulated e x p r e s s i o n "
(p. 239).
448
In the literary and cultural history of Spanish A m e r i c a presented by the

telluric critics, discontinuities and conflicts are smoothed over by their
almost-providentialist vision of an overarching historical causality. Faced
by the numerous instances of violence, fragmentation, and conflict that
have marked Spanish A m e r i c a since the C o n q u e s t , the telluric critics
needed to support their contention that Spanish A m e r i c a n culture had
finally " m a t u r e d " and could " e x p r e s s " itself artistically in an unmistak-
able fashion. For this, they needed a solid point of origin, or ground, for
Spanish A m e r i c a n culture. T h i s ground, they believed, could be found in
the indigenous pre-Hispanic cultures. T h e hieroglyph-covered ruins of
pre-Hispanic cultures, like those of Greece and R o m e for modern Europe,
represented a foundation and origin for Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, an
origin to w h i c h it w a s possible to return again and again due to the
continued survival of some of the indigenous groups. H o w e v e r , the
present-day condition of the native Americans did not interest these critics
(Mariátegui excepted) as much as their ancient ruins, sculptures, and
paintings. In Henríquez Ureña's w o r d s : " T h e C o n q u e s t decapitated those
native cultures; it made religion, art, science (where there w a s science),
and writing (among the M a y a s and Aztecs), disappear. But there survived
many local traditions in daily and domestic life. T h e r e w a s a fusion of
European and indigenous elements w h i c h has lasted until today (Historia,
30).
Since concepts such as " f u s i o n " and mestizaje played such an import-
ant role in their theory of culture, it is not surprising that these critics paid
a g o o d deal of attention to colonial literature, in w h i c h the first testimony
of these phenomena could be discerned. T h e vision of the colonial period
found in w o r k s such as Henríquez Ureña's La cultura y las letras
coloniales en Santo Domingo and Picón Salas's De la Conquista a la
Independencia w a s more positive than that of the R o m a n t i c s . Rather than
the g l o o m y A m e r i c a n M i d d l e Ages presented by Juan M a r í a Gutiérrez
and others, the telluric critics s a w this period bathed in the light of the
Renaissance and the Chiaroscuro of the Baroque.
Unlike the Spanish A m e r i c a n R o m a n t i c s , the telluric critics' under-
standing of the Baroque w a s more sophisticated and sympathetic, in
consonance w i t h the European A v a n t - G a r d e ' s revalorization of this
period (of w h i c h the tricentennial of G ó n g o r a in 192,7 w a s but one
manifestation). Reacting to M e n é n d e z y Pelayo's excessively critical (if
not prejudiced) assessments of figures such as Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z
and Juan R u i z de A l a r c ó n (1560-1639) in his Antología de poetas
a n
hispanoamericanos (1893), d following the ideas of turn-of-the-century
philosophical Vitalism, the telluric critics presented the Spanish A m e r i c a n
Baroque as a period of enormous vitality, richness, and splendor. W h e r e
Juan M a r í a Gutiérrez had only seen a "ridiculous and pedantic" C a r n i v a l ,
449
the telluric critics — fresh w i t h enthusiasm for the M e x i c a n Muralists of

the 1920s and 1930s - pointed with pride and amazement at the mixture of
pre-Hispanic and European motifs in colonial church art. Picón Salas
w e n t so far as to posit that the rich amalgamation of styles of the Baroque
had produced Spanish A m e r i c a ' s first autochthonous artistic movement,
the so-called " B a r r o c o de Indias." For the telluric critics, the colonial
period w a s the crucible in w h i c h the synthesis of Spanish A m e r i c a n
culture w a s begun, although its flowering w o u l d have to w a i t until the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
T h e frequency w i t h w h i c h terms such as " f u s i o n , " "synthesis," and
mestizaje are found in this criticism also indicates its constructive, or more
precisely, reconstructive nature. T h e telluric critics were engaged in
intellectual tasks w h i c h were consonant with those of the heroes of the
"novelas de la tierra," particularly in w o r k s such as Doña Bárbara (1929)
u s t a s
by R ó m u l o G a l l e g o s (1884—1969). J Santos L u z a r d o brought barbed
wire and the rule of l a w to the Venezuelan plains, the telluric critics -
authoritative, elitist, and magisterial (as R o b e r t o G o n z á l e z Echevarría
points out in The Voice of the Masters, 33-40), armed with the textual
w e a p o n s of their scholarship and their eloquence - set out to impose order
and method oft the ill-defined p a n o r a m a of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism in
the early twentieth century. It is not by chance that one of Reyes's most
ambitious w o r k s , an attempt at producing a Spanish A m e r i c a n literary
theory, is entitled El deslinde (1944). Certainly these critics (save for
Mariátegüi^ w h o died prematurely in 1930) were also great teachers and
founders of academic institutions, such as El C o l e g i o de M é x i c o in 1940
(in R e y e s ' s case) or the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the
Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1946 (in the case of Picón Salas).
Their influence w a s immense, and it w a s felt also in the United States, in
the development of N o r t h A m e r i c a n Hispanism.
A l t h o u g h Hispanism in the United States during the early decades of the
twentieth century w a s dominated by expatriate Spanish intellectuals such
as Federico de O n í s , w h o p r o m o t e d a b o v e all peninsular literature, the
cordial relations between the telluric critics and their Spanish counter-
parts (as well as W a s h i n g t o n ' s " G o o d N e i g h b o r " policy during the 1940s)
made it easy for the Spanish A m e r i c a n critics to be invited to lecture and
teach at N o r t h A m e r i c a n universities. Both Henríquez Ureña and Picón
Salas taught at C o l u m b i a University, M i d d l e b u r y College, and H a r v a r d ,
a m o n g other institutions, during the 1940s. Henríquez Ureña's Las
corrientes literarias en la América Hispánica comprises the Charles Eliot
N o r t o n lectures he gave at H a r v a r d in 1 9 4 0 - 1 9 4 1 , and Picón Salas's De la
Conquista a la Independencia resulted from courses taught at C o l u m b i a ,
Smith College, and M i d d l e b u r y College, from 1942-1943. It seems clear
that these critics' near-obsession w i t h cultural history is partly attribu-
450
table to their need to explain Spanish A m e r i c a to "the C o l o s s u s of the

North."
T h e telluric critics - like most great critics — were eclectic in their
methodology. Nevertheless, they s h o w e d a decided tendency to organize
their w o r k s around the history of culture. T h e i r interpretation of literary
w o r k s w a s usually contextual, designed to s h o w the links between
literature, culture, and society. M a r x i s t critics such as M a r i a t e g u i , A n i b a l
Ponce (in Humanismo burgues y humanismo proletario. De Erasmo a
Romain Rolland), and Juan M a r i n e l l o (in " A m e r i c a n i s m o y cubanismo
literarios") stressed, of course, the sociological and ideological influences,
while Henriquez Urena, Reyes, and Picon Salas, w i t h o u t ignoring socio
logy and politics, t o o k into account the history of ideas, art history, and
literary periodizations. In the case of the M a r x i s t s , a more thorough and
consistent application of M a r x ' s theory of class struggle should have led
them to question the concept of a unified Spanish A m e r i c a n culture, but
the need to preserve a "united front" in the struggle against United States
interventionism made this undesirable.
T h e i r insistence on contextualization made the telluric critics w a r y of
the linguistics-derived critical methodologies that had been developing in
G e r m a n y and Spain during the 1920s and 1930s, w h i c h eventually, under
the name of "stylistics," became a powerful school of literary analysis
during the 1940s and 1950s. In his late Marginalia. (Primera Serie) (1952),
Reyes observes: "So-called pure criticism - aesthetics and stylistics - only
considers the specifically literary value of a w o r k , in its form and its
content. But this cannot lead to a complete evaluation and understanding
of a w o r k . If w e d o not take into account the social, historical,
biographical, and psychological factors, w e will never arrive at a just
v a l o r i z a t i o n . " Nevertheless, there were many points of contact between
stylistics and the critical ideology of the telluric critics, and this made it
possible for both critical traditions to coexist and interpenetrate. Leaving
aside the textual immanentism of the stylistic critics, both critical
tendencies - like the A n g l o - A m e r i c a n " N e w C r i t i c i s m " of those same
years - stressed the study of literary w o r k s as coherent w h o l e s , every
detail of w h i c h contributed to the w o r k ' s total effect; they were both
intuitive and sympathetic to the w o r k s studied, and both paid close
attention to the writers' use of poetic and rhetorical devices. Furthermore,
both forms of criticism tended to portray literary history as a canon of
"great w o r k s " by means of w h i c h mostly male, white authors
" e x p r e s s e d " coherently their feelings, values, and ideas. Stylistics also w a s
able to provide Spanish A m e r i c a n literary criticism w i t h the rigorous
analytical terminology it had a l w a y s lacked and w h i c h the telluric critics
(Reyes's El deslinde notwithstanding) had been unable to produce.
T h e arrival of stylistics as a critical school serves as a bridge between
45i
telluric criticism and the postmodern period. Stylistics w a s the prelude to

a series of European critical modalities (such as Structuralism, semiotics,
and Post-structuralism) w h i c h began sweeping into Spanish A m e r i c a
throughout the 1960s and 1970s. A l t h o u g h influenced by the so-called
M u n i c h school of Karl Vossler and L e o Spitzer (both of w h o m w r o t e
extensively on Spanish literature), the Spanish stylistics of D á m a s o
A l o n s o and A m a d o A l o n s o (who were not related) w a s also a home-
g r o w n product, a result of the philological studies fomented by R a m ó n
M e n é n d e z Pidal in the C e n t r o de Estudios Históricos in M a d r i d and the
Revista de Filología Española. A m a d o A l o n s o in particular w a s respon-
sible for the dissemination of stylistics in Spanish A m e r i c a through the
Instituto de Filología de Buenos Aires (which he directed from 1927 until
his death), the Revista de Filología Hispánica (1939-1946), and the Nueva
Revista de Filología Hispánica (founded in 1947 and still extant). His
studies Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda and El modernismo en "La gloria
de don Ramiro" were highly influential. M a n y eminent Spanish A m e r i c a n
critics from the 1940s to the 1950s were his alumni, from scholars w h o
w r o t e mostly on peninsular literature, such as R a i m u n d o Lida (1908-
1979) and M a r i a R o s a Lida de M a l k i e l (1910-1962), to Spanish A m e r i c a n -
ists such as Enrique A n d e r s o n Imbert (b. 1910) and Juan C a r l o s G h i a n o
(b. 1920).
A l t h o u g h the critique of the concept of culture that w a s to precipitate
the postmodern period of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism can be partly
attributed to events such as the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n (begun in 1959), some
of its main points had been anticipated by Jorge Luis Borges in his 1932
essay, " E l escritor argentino y la tradición." T h e r e , adopting his typically
marginal stance, Borges stated that the relation of literature to national
culture w a s " a rhetorical theme, suitable for pathetic expositions; more
than a real mental difficulty I believe it is simply a mirage, a simulacrum, a
p s e u d o - p r o b l e m . " M u c h later, in the midst of the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n and
reflecting its impact on his thinking, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980)
delivered a searing criticism of himself and his generation for their
sentimental and Utopian nuestramericanismo ( " O u r A m e r i c a n - i s m " ) ; it
w a s not, he said, " M a r t i ' s concept of ' O u r A m e r i c a , ' but a vaguely
apocalyptic and imprecise ' O u r American-ism,' projected t o w a r d s a
future sine die [without a specific day for its fulfillment]." In a further
break w i t h the telluric ideology, O c t a v i o Paz, w h o s e o w n research into
M e x i c o ' s cultural identity from the perspective of Heideggerian Existen-
tialism in El laberinto de la soledad [The Labyrinth of Solitude 1950] led
him to dissolve that identity into an ontological " s o l i t u d e " c o m m o n to all
humanity, developed during the 1970s a theory of Spanish A m e r i c a n
literature that emphasized rupture and discontinuity. H e expressed it
succinctly and eloquently in a 1977 essay, " A l r e d e d o r e s de la literatura
452
hispanoamericana": " W h y struggle to define the character of Spanish
A m e r i c a n literature? Literatures have no character. O r rather, contradic-
tion, ambiguity, exception, and hesitancy are traits w h i c h appear in all
literatures. A t the heart of every literature there is a continuous dialogue
of oppositions, separations, bifurcations. Literature is an interweaving of
affirmations and negations, doubts and interrogations."
T h e novels of the Spanish A m e r i c a n literary Boom of the 1960s also
contributed to this questioning of the concept of culture. A l t h o u g h it is
true that such questioning has been implicit in Spanish A m e r i c a n literary
w o r k s from the very beginning, in the Boom novels the framework of
topics and tropes that sustained the telluric concept of culture became
even more visible and its artificiality became more apparent. T h e playful
approach to literature and constant narrative shuttling back and forth
between France and Argentina in Rayuela (1963) by Julio C o r t á z a r ( 1 9 1 6 -
1984) point to the dialectic of unity and fragmentation that underlies the
concept of culture. A n a l o g o u s l y , the allegory of Peruvian society in the
Leoncio Prado military school created by M a r i o V a r g a s Llosa (b. 1936) in
La ciudad y los p err os (1963), or his vision of Peru as a w h o r e h o u s e in La
casa verde (1966), erode the harmonizing and ennobling aspects of the
telluric view of culture. Furthermore, if one considers the fictional
M a c o n d o in Cien años de soledad (1967) by Gabriel G a r c í a M á r q u e z (b.
1928) as an allegory of Spanish A m e r i c a n history and culture, the
revelation of M a c o n d o ' s detailed inscription in Melquiades's manuscript
and its final erasure from the face of the Earth by a "biblical hurricane"
are suggestive of the artificial, fictional nature of the concept of culture.
In such a fluid and changeable situation, it is not surprising to find that
the t w o most eminent Spanish A m e r i c a n professional critics of the 1960s
and 1970s - Emir R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and A n g e l R a m a - both came from
backgrounds that were more journalistic than academic. A l s o , both were
from Uruguay, a fact w h i c h is partly coincidental, but partly explainable
by the continuity of the critical tradition laid d o w n by R o d ó , and by the
social climate in Uruguay during the 1940s and 1950s, w h i c h fomented a
lively sociopolitical and cultural debate in newspapers and journals such
as Marcha, El País, El Día, Clinamen, Escritura, Marginalia, and
Número. T h e y were both members of w h a t R a m a called "the critical
generation," a generation w h o s e approach to literature w a s decidedly
cosmopolitan and interdisciplinary (if s o m e w h a t dilettantish): they linked
literary criticism to art and film criticism, as well as to politics and
sociology, and w r o t e and commented on such diverse topics as the films of
Ingmar Bergman, the writings of Borges and Samuel Beckett, Fidel
C a s t r o ' s struggle against Batista in C u b a , and the jazz music of John
Coltrane and M i l e s D a v i s .
Lifelong adversaries, R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and R a m a nevertheless made
453
analogous and at times complementary contributions to Spanish A m e r i

can criticism. In the tradition of D o m i n g o D e l m o n t e and other romantic
cultural animators, they founded and directed journals w h i c h p r o m o t e d
new views of literature as well as the careers of y o u n g writers. R o d r i g u e z
M o n e g a l founded Número in M o n t e v i d e o in 1945, and w a s its editor from
1949-1955 and 1963—1964; but his most important directorship w a s that
of Mundo Nuevo in Paris from 1 9 6 6 - 1 9 6 8 . Mundo Nuevo is widely
regarded as the main journal that contributed to the p r o m o t i o n and
diffusion of the Spanish A m e r i c a n narrative Boom. It featured texts and
interviews by such writers as G a r c í a M á r q u e z , C a r l o s Fuentes (b. 1928),
V a r g a s Llosa, Borges, Pablo N e r u d a (1904-1973), Juan C a r l o s Onetti
(1909-1994), M a n u e l Puig (1939—1990), and Sarduy, a m o n g others.
For his part, R a m a founded in 1962 the A r e a publishing house in
M o n t e v i d e o , directed the Biblioteca A y a c u c h o (a publishing venture
sponsored by the Venezuelan government) from 1974 until his death, and
founded in C a r a c a s the journal Escritura in 1 9 7 5 . T h r o u g h his director
ship of the Biblioteca A y a c u c h o , R a m a presided over a wide-ranging
effort to republish and m a k e accessible to scholars and students critical
editions of classic w o r k s of Spanish A m e r i c a n narrative prose, essay, and
poetry. Similarly, in the t w o - v o l u m e Borzoi Anthology of Latin American
Literature (1977), published in English, R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l presented a
broad sampling of fragments from w o r k s by major authors from Spanish
America and Brazil from the colonial period to the present, accompanied
by introductions w h i c h related each author to both the Spanish A m e r i c a n
and the Western literary tradition. W h a t e v e r reservations one might have
about the results, it is unquestionable that R a m a and R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l
contributed powerfully to the formation of the present-day canon of
Spanish A m e r i c a n literature.
A n o t h e r similarity between R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l and R a m a lies in their
contribution to the study of Spanish A m e r i c a n M o d e r n i s m : R o d r i g u e z
M o n e g a l with his edition of R o d ó ' s Obras completas (Editorial A g u i l a r ,
1957) and various essays on U r u g u a y a n writers of the Generation of 1900,
and R a m a w i t h ambitious and groundbreaking sociological interpre
tations of the modernist movement in b o o k s and essays such as Rubén
Darío y el modernismo. Circunstancia socioeconómica de un arte ameri
cano, " L a dialéctica de la modernidad en José M a r t í " (1971), and the
posthumously published Las máscaras democráticas del modernismo.
Differences between these t w o great professional critics abound, of
course. R a m a ' s approach to Spanish A m e r i c a n literature w a s a l w a y s
passionately political (although not partisan). Sometimes, in his fervent
"Spanish A m e r i c a n i s m " he seemed to return to the ideas of the telluric
critics, although his approach to the culture-literature link in Spanish
America w a s less idealistic than that of the earlier critics. In b o o k s such as
454
Transcultur ación narrativa en América Latina and La ciudad letrada, he

made use of ideas culled from anthropology and from heterodox M a r x i s t
thinkers such as T h e o d o r W . A d o r n o and Walter Benjamin. A t R a m a ' s
untimely death, his eclecticism and rather journalistic penchant for
following critical fads (another similarity with R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l )
seemed to be giving w a y to a more systematic and coherent approach, as
may be seen in La ciudad letrada.
A n uncomfortable aspect of R a m a ' s writing, even to his many
admirers, w a s its stylistic a w k w a r d n e s s ; as T o m á s Eloy M a r t í n e z
observes, R a m a " a l m o s t did not stop to correct w h a t he w a s writing,
being excited by the ease w i t h w h i c h his thoughts a l w a y s hit the mark,
w i t h o u t realizing that in his haste his language stumbled over too many
modal adverbs, and never finished making its w a y through the tangle of
subordinate sentences, and that it therefore lost - because of its untidyness
- p a r t of its enormous persuasive f o r c e " ("Angel R a m a " , 645). R o d r i g u e z
M o n e g a l ' s style, on the other hand, w a s almost a l w a y s precise, witty,
ironic — and usually dispassionate. It w a s fully appropriate for a critic
w h o s e approach to Spanish A m e r i c a n literature w a s less nationalistic and
more "extraterritorial." R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ' s criticism, as R o b e r t o
G o n z á l e z Echevarría has pointed out, " l a c k s the strident Spanish A m e r i
canism of certain academic criticism, or its correlative opposite, a
condescending attitude. R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l can write about little-known
Spanish A m e r i c a n writers w i t h the-same respect and rigor as a scholar in
studying a Renaissance humanist, and he can very matter-of-factly state
that a Spanish A m e r i c a n writer is more important than a great figure of
European letters" ( " N o t a critica sobre The Borzoi Anthology of Latin
American Literature," 227). Less overtly political, more skeptical (like the
many English writers w h o s e w o r k s he k n e w well and, of course, like
Borges), R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l ' s critical approach w a s nonetheless eclectic
(though b o r r o w i n g heavily in his later years from Structuralism and
semiotics) and tended to stress the writers' biographical context, as may
be seen in his w e l l - k n o w n studies on Bello (El otro Andrés Bello), N e r u d a
(El viajero inmóvil), H o r a c i o Q u i r o g a (1878-1937; El desterrado), and
Borges (jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography).
In many w a y s , the critical trajectories of R a m a (Marxist-influenced,
politically committed) and R o d r i g u e z M o n e g a l (with his structuralist
inclinations and "extraterritorial" perspective) reflect the development of
the variegated and turbulent p a n o r a m a of criticism in Spanish A m e r i c a
from i960 to 1990. It is a p a n o r a m a , as said at the beginning of this essay,
divided into extremely different and competing critical ideologies, from
M a r x i s m to Post-structuralism. T h e M a r x i s t approach has a m o n g its
salient representatives critics such as R o b e r t o Fernández R e t a m a r (b.
1930; in Caliban and Para una teoría de la literatura hispanoamericana)
455
and journals such as the C u b a n Casa de las Americas and the Peruvian
Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana. A t the other extreme,
Structuralism, semiotics, and Post-structuralism are vividly present in
w o r k s of writer-critics such as Sarduy (in b o o k s such as Escrito sobre un
cuerpo, Barroco, and La simulación), of professional critics such as N o e
Jitrik (b. 1928; in Las contradicciones del modernismo) and Sylvia M o l l o y
(b. 1938; in Las letras de Borges), a m o n g many others, and in journals such
as the M e x i c a n Texto Crítico, the Venezuelan Escritura, and Dispositio
(published in the United States). A l t h o u g h powerful writer-critics, such as
Borges, Paz, L e z a m a , and Sarduy have c o m e to the fore during this period,
their w o r k has been too unsystematic to influence journalistic or academic
criticism very strongly, or to create a critical consensus.
Besides ideology and lack of system, another circumstance that
obstructs consensus in Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism is the current w e a k
ened and uncertain socio-economic condition of most Spanish A m e r i c a n
countries, w h i c h has led to a diaspora of intellectuals from the region to
the United States and Europe and has left Spanish A m e r i c a n universities
and research institutions foundering. A r g u a b l y , the consensus achieved
by the telluric critics can be traced to the moral and institutional support
their ideas were given by the M e x i c a n Revolution; a similar (and equally
deluded) consensus might have been reached during the 1960s by means of
the C u b a n R e v o l u t i o n , if the ideological issues in that revolution had not
been so polarized By the C o l d W a r . A t present, for better or w o r s e , the
main center of critical research on Spanish A m e r i c a n letters is in the
United States, and the effects of this situation are difficult to predict.
A n important and interesting development that has taken place mainly
in the United States in recent years has been the reinvigoration of the study
of colonial Spanish A m e r i c a n literature by contact with structuralist and
post-structuralist ideas and methodologies, and fields such as anthropo
logy. Because this " b o o m " in colonial studies is so recent and has taken
place mostly a m o n g US Hispanists (many of w h o m are, of course, Spanish
A m e r i c a n by birth or nationality), a detailed account of it w o u l d fall
outside the scope of this essay. F r o m the plethora of new critical editions,
special issues in professional journals, and book-length essays on colonial
themes one must mention José Juan A r r o m ' s critical edition and study of
Friar R a m ó n Pane's Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios
(1498 [1974]), w h i c h drew attention to the anthropological dimension of
the clash between Europeans and native Americans that gave birth to
writing in the N e w W o r l d . Theoretically sophisticated w o r k in a similar
vein has been produced w i t h regard to the seventeenth-century Peruvian
colonial chronicler Felipe Guarnan P o m a de A y a l a , by scholars such as
R o l e n a A d o r n o and Mercedes López-Baralt. H o w e v e r , other, better-
studied colonial figures have also benefitted from critically mature
456
approaches; such is the case of Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z , w h o s e

Inundación castálida (1689) received a new critical edition by G e o r g i n a
Sabat de Rivers in 1982, and w h o s e biography and w o r k s were the
subjects of a massive study by O c t a v i o Paz, Sor ]uana Inés de la Cruz, o las
trampas de la fe.
Exile or expatriation have not been infrequent, as w e have seen, in the
history of Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism, but the circumstances of exile and
w o r k in a foreign academic environment frequently impose on the
Spanish A m e r i c a n critics different agendas and priorities than they w o u l d
have at h o m e , and make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to engage
through journalism in the sort of debate that serves to disseminate views
and rally critics to a particular set of ideas. It may be argued that one result
of exile is precisely to prolong the tendency to explain Spanish A m e r i c a n
literature in terms of reified and essentialist concepts of literature and
culture, because of the exiles' natural tendency to " f r e e z e " their mother
tongue at the moment they parted from it, and their propensity to form an
idealized vision of their native countries in the distance. O n the other
hand, the critical ideologies n o w prevalent in the United States and
Europe (from deconstructionism to reader-response theory) w o r k
strongly against such a view, and the Spanish A m e r i c a n critics are clearly
paying attention. If there is any emerging consensus to be found in Spanish
A m e r i c a n criticism today, it probably lies in the acceptance by many
critics of ideological and methodological plurality, and in their attempts
to escape - through an appeal to such disciplines as anthropology,
semiotics, or sociology - from essentialist notions of both literature and
culture.
457

Literary Criticism in Spanish America

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Literary Criticism in Spanish America

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Literary criticism in Spanish America

Literary criticism already has a long and distinguished history in Spanish

great poets and narrators rather than in those of scholars or academics.

W i t h i n this process of cultural instauration that is in part the history of

Picon Salas (1901-1965), and Alfonso Reyes ( w h o , admittedly, w a s also a

Before w e begin to examine the periods outlined a b o v e in more detail,

literary values stressed in this criticism. O c c a s i o n a l l y , there are expres­

James Fenimore C o o p e r ; he befriended the philosopher James M i l l and

concept of g r a m m a r that w a s c o m m o n a m o n g the Neoclassicists; for

Spanish A m e r i c a n literature in terms of its supposed links w i t h the flora,

strove for a balanced appreciation of Spain's role in Spanish A m e r i c a ' s

Bello's didacticism, as may be seen from the previous quote, is also

Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment - w h i c h , paradoxically, make it

A m e r i c a n readers and writers. In both cases, the aim w a s the same: to

brothers M i g u e l Luis (1828-1888) and G r e g o r i o V i c t o r A m u n á t e g u i

Our colonial biography is a new paleontology whose elements lie

important than the background, in my attempt to clarify the moral and

H o w e v e r , despite the seemingly positivistic allusion to that nascent

nineteenth century that the deeper philosophical implications of romantic

T h i s vision of language as an object (frequently, a precious object) led

R e n a n , as philologist and writer, w a s dear to the hearts of the

M o s t of the literary criticism produced by the modernist poets intended

Los raros (as well as in other texts) is their w e l l - k n o w n " c o s m o p o l i t a n "

direct French presence w a s provided by Paul G r o u s s a c . A French immi-

w i t h Decadentism in Prosas prof anas w i t h the assertion " N o es el poeta de

A t least since M a r t i and R o d ó , this uniqueness is traced to the peculiarity

A m o n g his salient w o r k s dealing with Spanish A m e r i c a n literature are:

T h e telluric period in Spanish A m e r i c a n criticism springs directly from

In the literary and cultural history of Spanish A m e r i c a presented by the

the telluric critics — fresh w i t h enthusiasm for the M e x i c a n Muralists of

table to their need to explain Spanish A m e r i c a to "the C o l o s s u s of the

telluric criticism and the postmodern period. Stylistics w a s the prelude to

analogous and at times complementary contributions to Spanish A m e r i ­

Transcultur ación narrativa en América Latina and La ciudad letrada, he

approaches; such is the case of Sor Juana Inés de la C r u z , w h o s e

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literary values stressed in this criticism. O c c a s i o n a l l y , there are expres

analogous and at times complementary contributions to Spanish A m e r i