Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- FOREWORD
- FOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
- PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 INDEPENDENCE AND LITERARY EMANCIPATION
- 2 LITERATURE AND NATIONALISM
- 3 LITERATURE AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
- 4 TO CHANGE SOCIETY
- 5 MODERNISM
- 6 THE REDISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD
- 7 REGIONALISM IN THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY
- 8 REALISM AND THE NOVEL: ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL PROTEST AND INDIANIST WRITING
- 9 THE AVANT-GARDE IN POETRY
- 10 THEATRE
- 11 MODERN FICTION
- CONCLUSION
- NOTES
- READING LISTS
- INDEX OF AUTHORS
5 - MODERNISM
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- FOREWORD
- FOREWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
- PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 INDEPENDENCE AND LITERARY EMANCIPATION
- 2 LITERATURE AND NATIONALISM
- 3 LITERATURE AND AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
- 4 TO CHANGE SOCIETY
- 5 MODERNISM
- 6 THE REDISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD
- 7 REGIONALISM IN THE NOVEL AND SHORT STORY
- 8 REALISM AND THE NOVEL: ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL PROTEST AND INDIANIST WRITING
- 9 THE AVANT-GARDE IN POETRY
- 10 THEATRE
- 11 MODERN FICTION
- CONCLUSION
- NOTES
- READING LISTS
- INDEX OF AUTHORS
Summary
In the 1880s, a new phenomenon was to be observed in Latin America–the emergence of a number of poets who revolutionised the language and form of poetry. In Mexico, Salvador Díaz Mirón (1853–1928) and Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859–95); in Cuba, Julián del Casal (1863–93); in Colombia, José Asunción Silva (1865–96) explored new areas of experience and sought a literary language that would embrace these. However, it was the publication of Azul(1888) by the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío which gave this movement of innovation the greatest impetus, and it was also Darío who defined the movement and gave it the name of Modernism. This was in 1890 when, in an article on Ricardo Palma, he wrote:
[Palma] comprende y admira el espíritu nuevo que hoy anima a un pequeño pero triunfante y soberbio grupo de escritores y poetas de la América española: el modernismo. Conviene saber: la elevación y la demostración en la crítica… la libertad y el vuelo, y el triunfo de lo bello sobre lo preceptivo, en la prosa, y la novedad en la poesía; dar color y vida y aire y flexibilidad al antiguo verso que sufría aniquilosis, apretado entre tomados moldes de hierro.
There have been few better definitions of Modernism. Here Darío puts into a sentence the three essential strands that bound together a disparate group of individual writers–1. the rejection of any overt message or teaching in art; 2. the stress on beauty as the highest goal; 3. the need to free verse from traditional forms.
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- An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature , pp. 119 - 157Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995