In 1909, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867-1928), a Spanish journalist, radical politician and acclaimed realist and naturalist writer, made a trip to Argentina that would transform him into an internationalist and separate him from the inwardly nationalistic focus of movements such as the Generación del 98 and Novecentismo. His Argentine work, the novels Los argonautas (1913-1914) and La tierra de todos (1922) as well as some speeches, was met by myopic, ethnocentric criticism in Spain exacerbated later by Francos censorship. My project includes an original survey of this poorly-understood period and its foundation in modern nationalism, and establishes it as the ideological basis of all of his subsequent writing. Moreover, it presents a radical re-definition of his author as a global figure and demonstrates that he is one of the most international, visionary, iconoclastic, and modern writers of his time.
In Argentina, Blasco joined the most important movements of the so-called Literature of the Disaster (The Generation of 98, Regenerationism, and Hispanoamericanism) in promoting Spain as a country determined to overcome its leyenda negra (the Black Legend). However, in the face of the concentration of these movements on el dolor de España (Spains grief), he added an aspect of internationalism to these ideas and promoted an optimistic nationalism of the masses. Furthermore, Blasco exploited, more than any of his contemporaries, the growing animosity among the Latin American ruling class against British and North American materialism and utilitarism in favor of Spains cultural prestige. He understood as no other of his generation that his contribution toward the restoration of the nation would involve a campaign for a Spanish-Creole alliance that would bring about a shared identity that reached beyond national borders. In fact this study reveals for the first time the profound the ways Blascos Argentine work overlaps with that of Argentinas Generation of the Century writers and champions of the Creole cause particularly Manuel Gálvez and Ricardo Rojas. In addition, it demonstrates that Blasco Ibáñezs affinities with the Creole cause and its lucrative consequences are what initiated the deeply-entrenched and widely-perpetuated misinterpretation of his post-1909 writing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-12142009-180914 |
| Date | 06 January 2010 |
| Creators | Sánchez Samblás, María Victoria |
| Contributors | Andrés Zamora, Edward H. Friedman, Cathy L. Jrade, Marshall C. Eakin |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu//available/etd-12142009-180914/ |
| 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 Vanderbilt University 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. |
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