Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Modern Foreign Languages

Major Professor

Óscar Rivera-Rodas

Abstract

This dissertation examines the new historical consciousness and the diglossic, intercultural expression that emerged in Hispanic American poetry during the 20th century, specifically regarding Pre-Columbian cultures and the Spanish Conquest. The study shows that poets, like essayists, dramatists, and novelists who have received more critical attention, participated in the formation of a new historical consciousness of Hispanic American origins. Poets rejected the ahistorical cosmopolitism that had dominated lyrical production since the Hispanic American modernist movement. These writers also rejected traditional European judgments of the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica and of the Andean region originating in the chronicles and perpetuated in traditional historiography. The work of four poets is examined in the transition between literary modernity and postmodernity, according to these two literary periods as established by Óscar Rivera-Rodas.These writers reconsider the validity and worth of indigenous cultures and cosmovisions in intercultural poetry that creates contact and conflict between Western culture and this traditionally devalued root of modern Latin American identity. "Nostalgias imperiales," a section of Los heraldos negros (1918) by César Vallejo, and early works including Piedra de sacrificios (1924) by Carlos Pellicer, are considered as avant-garde precursors to this new historical consiousness during literary modernity. During literary postmodernity, Canto general (1950) by Pablo Neruda and Oda a Guatemala (1953) and Entonces, comenzó a reinar el azoro (1961) by Raúl Leiva are analyzed as examples of historical revisionism through poetry. Since these poets employ a type of hypertextuality, in many cases re-writing and transforming previous historical discourse, the study employs the tools for analysis provided by Gérard Genette in Palimpsests.Certain poems are considered as hypertexts that re-write previous hypotexts. I consider pragmatic transformation (in this case, the alteration of historical events), the elimination of traditional motives and the invention of new ones, and the transvaluation of historical figures, such as Cuauhtémoc, Atahualpa, and Francisco Pizarro. As they re-imagine the Spanish Conquest in a very subjective way, these poets also reincorporate Pre-Columbian worldviews, myths, beliefs, and religious and cultural symbols in an attempt to forge a modern Hispanic American identity that values all of its cultural roots.

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