acase@tulane.edu / This dissertation analyzes the portrayal of the professional writer in modern canonical South American fiction. At the turn of the 20th century, letrados (writer-statesmen) are replaced by professional writers who become part of the modern workforce by selling their literary production to newspapers. This fact jeopardizes the new writers’ legitimacy as leading voices of society. Thus, they attempt to authorize themselves discursively as intellectuals in order to maintain the moral and social status previously accorded to letrados. I argue that the frequent appearance of writer figures (journalists, literary critics, poets, novelists) as protagonists in South American fiction has been modern novelists’ most visible and effective discursive strategy to legitimize the status of intellectuals during the 20th century. This dissertation shows the historic process of professionalization of the writer in South America, the ways that writers problematize and assume their participation in the workforce, and the diverse functions attributed to the figure of the intellectual in modern South American narrative. Each chapter analyzes a canonical fictional texts, such as La vorágine (1924) by José Eustasio Rivera, Museo de la novela de la Eterna (1967) by Macedonio Fernández, Conversación en la catedral (1969) by Mario Vargas Llosa, and “Nombre falso” (1975) by Ricardo Piglia, and the non-fictional public interventions of their authors. / 1 / María Catalina Rincón-Bisbey