Seminar: Text, culture, society 09-SSTKS-3MH-33

During the seminar representative texts of the Argentinean narrative (short story and novel) of the 20th century will be read and discussed. The main evolutionary lines of Argentine literature since the beginning of the 20th century will be explained: the final stage of modernism and the rebirth of literary nationalism, the appearance of the avant-gardes, the consolidation of the (neo) fantastic, and the emergence of new narrative forms. From the second half of the century, complex political processes will take place that will tragically mark, with a succession of authoritarian and dictatorial governments, Argentine cultural and institutional life up to the present day. All this will find its reflection in the literary works of the period. The corpus of the course includes both texts considered classical, as well as others perhaps less familiar (to Polish readers) but no less valuable and influential. Authors to comment include: Leopoldo Lugones, Julio Cortázar, Ricardo Güiraldes, Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Adolfo Bioy Casares, María Esther Vásquez, Marco Denevi, Abelardo Castillo, Luisa Valenzuela, Juan José Hernández, Rodolfo Walsh, Liliana Heker, Juan José Saer , Daniel Moyano, Antonio di Benedetto, Guillermo Martínez, among others.

The seminar will read and comment on representative texts of Spanish-American avant-garde narrative. These are texts written in the first decades of the 20th century (1920s and 1930s), which testify to a literary milieu eager to try out new artistic forms. The novels to be discussed in this course are formal "experiments" that expand the boundaries of literary creation, thus offering authentic lyrical and narrative mosaics. Moreover, they are texts governed, as critic Fernando Burgos rightly notes, by the audacious "principle of assimilation, of mixing, of collage of discourses," and which "reveal a source with an unquestionable Surrealist provenance, but realized in a new Latin American context," which "produced an exceptional result, a source of surprising productivity, nourished by its own explorations and original experiments." These texts opened the way for later literary innovations. The main authors to be read in the course are: César Vallejo, Macedonio Fernández, Arqueles Vela, Roberto Arlt, Julio Garmendia, Pablo Palacio, Martín Adán, Felisberto Hernández, Vicente Huidobro (with his short novels written with Hans Arp) and Juan Emar.

Primary literature will be delivered at the beginning of classes

AAVV. Historia de la literatura argentina. Tomos 1, 2, 3 y 4. Centro Editor de América Latina, Buenos Aires, 1980.
ALTAMIRANO, Carlos y SARLO, Beatriz, Ensayos argentinos. De Sarmiento a la vanguardia, Ariel, Buenos Aires. 1997
PRIETO, Martín. Breve historia de la literatura argentina, Buenos Aires, Taurus, 2006.
ROMERO, José Luis, Breve historia de la Argentina, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009.

Primary bibliography (provided to students at the beginning of the course)

Barrera, T. (2006), Las vanguardias hispanoamericanas, Madrid: Síntesis.

Burgos, F. (ed.) (1986), Prosa hispánica de vanguardia, Madrid: Orígenes.

Millares, S. (ed.) (2013), Prosas hispánicas de vanguardia, Madrid: Cátedra.

Niemeyer, K. (2014), Subway de los sueños, alucinamiento, libro abierto: La novela vanguardista hispanoamericana, Madrid: Iberoamericana.

Osorio, N. (1981), “Para una caracterización histórica del vanguardismo literario hispanoamericano”,
Revista Iberoamericana, 114-115 (1981), 227-254.
Pérez Firmat, G. (1982), Idle Fictions: The Hispanic Vanguard Novel, 1926 -1934, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press

Schwartz, J. (1991), Las vanguardias latinoamericanas, textos programáticos y críticos, Madrid: Editorial Cátedra.
Verani, H. (986), Las vanguardias literarias en Hispanoamérica: manifiestos, proclamas y otros escritos, Roma: Bulzoni.