The Politics of Spanish American 'Modernismo'
By Exquisite Design

This 1998 book studies the ways in which nineteenth-century Spanish American writers and intellectuals imagined, described, and promoted idealized notions of a pan-Hispanic culture.

Gerard Aching (Author)

9780521572491, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 September 1997

192 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.45 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Aching's book successfully raises the argument for considering the modernistas as the first to create a collective discourse around Spanish-American cultural identity.' Bulletin of Spanish Studies

The Politics of Spanish American Modernismo, initially published in 1998, elucidates the professional and literary means by which Spanish American modernistas negotiated a cultural politics of rapprochement with Spain and Europe in order to differentiate their Americanness from that of the United States. Gerard Aching argues that these turn-of-the-century men of letters were in fact responsible for the burgeoning role that intellectuals and writers had (and continue to have) in defining pan-Hispanicism. Aching's arguments contribute to debates about modernity and the colonial/postcolonial condition in nineteenth-century Hispanic literatures. The interdisciplinary approach will appeal to scholars in literature, cultural studies, Latin American studies and history.

Acknowledgements
1. A reevaluation of the Modernistas' detachment
2. The reino interior
3. Poetry and the performance of cultural meaning: Darío's 'Salutación del optimista'
4. Sculpting Spanish America: Rodó's Ariel
5. Founding a transnational cultural literacy: the modernista literary reviews
6. The 'excesses' of Spanish American modernismo
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography of works cited
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]