This thesis examines the Latin American avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s not through the usual focus, poetry, but through narrative fiction. I am working here with three 1930s novels that portray profound ideological concerns that had not often been considered in earlier Latin American avant-garde narratives. El tungsteno, by Peruvian César Vallejo, is a mining novel that includes indigenous issues. Parque industrial, by Brazilian Patrícia Galvao, is a gender-based novel with urban and proletarian themes. And Cubagua, by the Venezuelan Enrique Bernardo Núñez, is an historical novel, confronting the trauma of neo/colonization with the beginning of the populist modernization project.
The beginning of the 1930s provides an important perspective from which to focus on the literary development of the continent. This is because it was not only a powerful world-changing moment but also, as I argue, an opportunity for a rupture within the institutions of literature. After the world political, social, and economic crises of 1928-1929, the Latin American avant-garde had to search for other ideological and aesthetic tactics to participate in the debates about national configurations in the international context, that reflect the emerge of definitive new social forces.
My proposal is to explore the literary tensions of these Latin-American narratives, suggesting that it is possible to identify in them concerns such as the influences of mass movements within peripheral societies. I argue that despite their different responses to the literary-historical conjuncture, each of the texts chosen exhibited conflictive components which I call contaminatory: that is to say, an unstable (even contradictory) mixture of political as well as literary elements from very different origins.
One of the means of accomplishing this, after a review and critique of some key avant-garde concepts, is through an analysis of the relationship between Vallejos cultural essays (including his USSR travel books) and El tungsteno. Then, in the case of Parque industrial, I evaluate the links with other Brazilian works and female voices of the time. Finally, I assess the relationships between Cubagua and some of his historical works, before summing up the different contaminatory strategies of the era in my conclusion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12052006-172521 |
| Date | 30 January 2007 |
| Creators | Bruzual, Alejandro |
| Contributors | John Beverley, Alejandro de la Fuente, Bobby Chamberlain, Gerald Martin |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12052006-172521/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0171 seconds