To date, the Latin American essay remains little studied, certainly
compared to other literary genres such as the novel, poetry and theater.
This thesis examines prevailing theorists' conceptions of the essay and
its historical development in Latin America. Employing the notions of
cultural identity and difference, which have long been central to Latin
American critical thought, this study distances the development of the
essay in Latin America from Spanish colonial writings of the sixteenth
century. In its place, this study proposes an innovative classification
scheme that incorporates cultural codes as its main criteria in order to
provide a more equitable treatment of essays from areas that have
traditionally been marginalized in standard chronologically based
classification schemes.
Some of the paradigms used in this study to defend the integrity
and specificity of the Latin American essay and culture are Inca
Garcilaso de la Vega's affirmation of the values of the continent's
indigenous pre-columbian heritage, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's
discursive reinvention of South America, and Jose Marti's notion of
hibridez—a cultural and racial complex mixture rooted in the region's
history—as an affirmation of a continental Latin American cultural
identity.
This thesis demonstrates that since Latin American essays diverge
thematically from colonialist discourse, studies of the origins of the
Latin American essay do not have to perpetuate the colonialist legacy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8629 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Chachagua, Freddy Antonio |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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