Dimensiones de la temporalidad de la modernidad estética en América Latina

Abstract

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE

DIMENSIONES DE LA TEMPORALIDAD DE LA MODERNIDAD ESTÉTICA EN AMÉRICA LATINA

FÁTIMA REGINA NOGUEIRA

Dissertation under the direction of Professor Cathy Login Jrade

This dissertation explores the portrayal of time in Latin American Literature starting at the end of the nineteenth century and concluding with works published in the 1970’s. Latin America’s distinctive realization of modernity, which allowed for the coexistence of various temporalities within the context of socio-cultural life, impinged upon the formulation and representation of time in the literary texts of this period. My dissertation explores the concept of an imagined modernity and shows how it allowed Latin American writers to present themselves and their countries on an equal footing with Europe, reaching a state of cultural synchronicity. They achieve this synchronicity despite the survival of elements from the colonial and neocolonial past which tended to alter the nature of Latin America modernity, creating a sui generis mode of artistic expression. The mixed temporalities that surface in Latin American literature appear as a struggle between a personal, subjective time and a more traditional, linear, and historical time that points to an improved future through progress. They also appear in the coexistence of the persistent critique of rationalistic thought and the formulation of a new concept of history in which discontinuity and randomness play decisive roles. These recurring perspectives are related to political concerns, most notably issues of globalization and neocolonialism. The most significant contribution of my study to the field is to elucidate how the tensions between modernity as a new, transformational, socio-cultural force and History as a measure of progress played a crucial role in the artistic constitution of the multidimensional depiction of temporality in Brazilian and Spanish American prose and poetry of the period. From Dario to Carpentier and from Machado de Assis to Oswald de Andrade, I examine how the dialectics of time in a constantly evolving society reflected the awareness of an uneven modernity that originated in the fissure between its aesthetical and social goals.