L’écrivain Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963) est l’auteur d’une œuvre qui introduit, en Espagne, une écriture dont la critique souligne très tôt la singularité. En 1912, il crée les Greguerías, forme littéraire brève et ludique, immédiatement commentée pour sa nouveauté mâtinée de subversion. Celle-ci se diffuse en quelques années dans la presse espagnole et reçoit un écho favorable hors des frontières de la Péninsule. Jusqu’en 1962, Ramón Gómez de la Serna publie, dans les journaux ou sous forme de volumes anthologiques, ces courts paragraphes qu’il définit comme l’union de l’humour et de la métaphore, et où il allie la recherche de la dissonance à un travail poétique sur notre perception du monde. C’est pourtant la forme tardive de la greguería qui est la mieux connue et rares sont les études qui ont posé la question de la formation littéraire de Ramón Gómez de la Serna, tant dans les lectures qui ont pu influencer l’auteur que par les choix éditoriaux qui ont présidé à la naissance des greguerías. La présente étude prétend réévaluer la situation littéraire de Ramón Gómez de la Serna dans son contexte de formation, celui des années 1910, où les modèles d’écriture et de professionnalisation, au travers d’une collaboration quotidienne aux journaux et revues de l’époque, sont les fondements esthétiques essentiels de l’œuvre future de l’écrivain. Dans ce cadre, la prose ramonienne offre alors un nouvel éclairage sur la nature plurielle et syncrétique de ce que j’ai appelé le creuset esthétique des années 1910 en Espagne. / Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963) was the author of a work that introduced in Spain a kind of writing whose singularity was very early underlined by the critics. In 1912, he created the Greguerías, a brief and playful literary form which was immediately commented on for its novelty tinged with subversion. Within a few years, that form spread throughout the Spanish press and was welcomed in a positive way outside the frontiers of the peninsula. Until 1962, Ramón Gómez de la Serna published numbers of these short paragraphs in newspapers or anthologies. He defined them as the alliance of humour and metaphor, and combined there his research into dissonance with a poetical work on our perception of the world. Yet, it is the later form of the greguería that is best known today; very few studies have focused on the literary education of Ramón Gómez de la Serna and raised the issue of the readings which may have influenced the author or o! f the editorial choices which gave birth to the greguerías. The purpose of this study is to reassess the literary position of Ramón Gómez de la Serna within the context of his training, that of the years 1910. The models of writing prevailing then and the vocational dimension the craft took on at the time — shaped by a daily collaboration with newspapers and magazines — were the essential aesthetic foundations of the writer’s future work. In this context, the Ramonian prose sheds a new light on the plural and syncretic nature of what I have called the aesthetic ferment of the years 1910 in Spain.

No es frecuente que aparezcan reunidos en un mismo estudio crítico los autores que encabezan el título de esta tesis. La tradición marca un camino según el cual Ramón Gómez de la Serna abre las exploraciones sobre las vanguardias en España, en el que Rafael Alberti integra un capítulo sobre la generación del 27, en el que Francisco Ayala pone de manifiesto el hasta hace escaso tiempo renacido interés por la narrativa deshumanizada o de vanguardia. Los dos últimos nombres encuentran además un destacado lugar en el subgrupo de autores o literatura del exilio republicano, categoría que juega un papel relevante en este trabajo, pero sin quedar cercenada del resto en una sección aparte, como ocurrió durante décadas. La reunión de los tres autores, quienes tienen entre sí más reconocidas y fijadas diferencias que similitudes, constituye el punto de partida para realizar un itinerario diferente de los más acrisolados por la obra de tres figuras descollantes de las letras españolas del pasado sigo. Y del presente, si hacemos justicia a la longevidad y vitalidad intelectual de Francisco Ayala.

La presente tesis, inscripta en el marco de las relaciones entre la literatura y el cine, propone un análisis de la influencia del medio audiovisual en textos de la narrativa hispánica desde la perspectiva de la crítica literaria. La hipótesis central plantea esencialmente que algo cambia en la obra de ciertos autores cuando su escritura es atravesada por la experiencia intensa del cine. A partir de allí, pretendo localizar y describir constantes -contemplando también las variables- ocasionadas por el impacto del cine en la prosa literaria en un momento clave de las letras hispánicas: los comienzos del siglo XX. Para ello, abordaré textos literarios cuyos autores resultan paradigmáticos en lo concerniente a la convergencia entre la literatura y el medio cinematográfico en el período comprendido entre los años 1900 y 1930, al que denominaré “Primeras influencias del cine en la literatura hispánica: los pioneros. 1900-1930”, etapa que abarca los comienzos del cine y su consolidación hasta la aparición del sonoro. Las obras de los escritores españoles Ramón Gómez de la Serna y Francisco Ayala, junto al rioplatense Horacio Quiroga, resultan representativas de este período inicial, en tanto se encuentran atravesadas por el surgimiento y afianzamiento del novedoso medio. En todas ellas existe una zona de producción ficcional que la crítica reconoce extraña, diferente, y que resulta complejo -a riesgo de acabar realizando un análisis reduccionista- interpelar con las mismas categorías que el resto de su obra. Esa parte de su escritura coincide justamente con la zona en que hablan de cine. De este modo, la relación con el nuevo medio provoca que dichos autores se tornen menos reconocibles en las zonas de intersección.

Whereas contemporary debates in Latin American studies addressing sovereignty often focus on dictatorships and the transitions to democratic governments in Latin America in the late twentieth century, Sovereignties Displaced: Avant-Garde Prose and Authoritarianism in Spain, Chile, and Argentina (1923-1936) adopts a transatlantic framework and directs critical attention to the cultural production of the interwar period. The historical and cultural events preceding and following 1929 are connected to World War I, the political crisis of democratic systems, and the global socioeconomic instability of the period. The three countries studied in the present work would be affected by these conditions, sharing an almost synchronic development of the authoritarian governments of Miguel Primo de Rivera in Spain (1923-1930), of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in Chile (1927-1931), and José Félix Uriburu in Argentina (1930-1932). Additionally, the rise of authoritarianism and the decay of parliamentary institutions characterizing this epoch condition and inscribe the political essays and avant-garde novels composed by the intellectuals and writers analyzed in this study: from Spain, María Zambrano (1904-1991), Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963), and Benjamín Jarnés (1888-1949); from Chile, Alberto Edwards Vives (1874-1932), Juan Emar (1893-1964), and Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948); and from Argentina, Ramón Doll (1896-1970), Norah Lange (1905-1972), and Roberto Arlt (1900-1942). It should be noted that while considering national circumstances, my argumentation is divided into sections organized not by country, but rather by subject matter: a methodological and theoretical introduction, three analytical chapters, and concluding remarks. Established critical assessments of the avant-gardes, as offered by experts like Renato Poggioli (1907-1963), have underscored that democratic forms of government would provide the initial conditions of possibility of the historical avant-gardes. Other scholars, however, have recognized the interdependency of early twentieth century artistic discourses, revolutionary ideas, and authoritarianism. Informed by the theorization of sovereignty and democracy of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), and the concept of community of Roberto Esposito (1950-), my research examines, in political essays and vanguard novels, the opposition of individual vis-à-vis collective forms of rule. The texts of my corpus manifest a recurrent concern relating to the tension between self-rule and collective-rule, a dynamic which organizes and destabilizes avant-garde formations themselves. Consequently, I analyze the philosophical and political ramifications of these authors’ defense, negation, or destabilization of the individual-collective opposition in the context of the deterioration of parliamentarism. In my first chapter, I examine the following essays that represent a range of political positions from the interwar years: Horizonte del liberalismo (1930) by María Zambrano, Liberalismo en la literatura y la política (Con una segunda edición de: “Democracia mal menor”) (1934, n/d) by Ramón Doll, and La fronda aristocrática en Chile (1928) by Alberto Edwards Vives. Framed by the sociological assessments of José Ortega y Gasset in La rebelión de las masas (1930), this chapter considers these essayists’ observations regarding mass politics and the role of political and economic elites. I foreground the ethical problems relating to these authors’ conceptions of the human subject and their concomitant formulations of governance, deriving from various ideological orientations. The essayists’ comparable anxieties regarding the limits of democratic politics reveal the complexities of the period and serve as a springboard for the subsequent chapters that study the politics of avant-garde novels. In my second chapter, shifting from essayistic discourse to vanguard fiction, I analyze philosophical oppositions central to the configuration of sovereignty, and to the theory and practice of democracy. These tensions organize various components of the following novels: Un año (1935) by Juan Emar (pseudonym of Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi), 45 días y 30 marineros (1933) by Norah Lange, and El caballero del hongo gris (1928) by Ramón Gómez de la Serna. I demonstrate that, although these narratives do not contain explicit references to the emergence of authoritarianism and the erosion of parliamentarism of the period, these narratives are structured by problems that have implications for a thinking of issues relating to sovereignty and democracy. These novels similarly present how individuals interact with groups, such that it becomes imperative to consider the political consequences of these relations in order to critique, for example, fraternalistic and nationalistic notions of political filiation. My final chapter studies the narrative presentations of radical political projects that aim to restructure society in Los siete locos (1929) by Roberto Arlt, La próxima (1934) by Vicente Huidobro, and Lo rojo y lo azul (1932) by Benjamín Jarnés. In contrast to the narratives included in the second chapter, these avant-garde novels establish an explicit dialogue with the conditions of crisis of the interwar years. From insurrections and utopian settlements, to revolutionary military revolts, these narrations depict small vanguard groups that propose various plots that seek to radically reshape the social order. Even though poetry is often positioned as the paradigmatic form of vanguard literary expression, my research theorizes the understudied phenomenon of Hispanic avant-garde prose. In particular, I account for the variation among avant-garde novels of the period, by sustaining that there are gradations of vanguard narrative depending on different factors that range from the transparency or opacity of linguistic expression, to the organization of the narrative material. In this sense, some novels considered vanguardist, while approaching a certain radicality in terms of language and form, may incorporate elements of the realist-naturalist novelistic tradition. Likewise, I assert the importance of attending to the varied uses of meta-reflexive procedures in Hispanic vanguard prose. Given their implicit and explicit interaction with contemporary historical conditions and political and artistic discourses of the 1920s and 1930s, I contend that the essays and avant-garde novels analyzed offer a fertile ground to examine the nature of sovereignty, while also presenting, in some crucial instances, potential images of what a democracy worthy of this name could look like. / Spanish