Instructive Discourse in the Novels of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Christopher M
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2009 Didacticism and reconciliation: instructive discourse in the novels of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano Christopher M. Ray Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Ray, Christopher M., "Didacticism and reconciliation: instructive discourse in the novels of Ignacio Manuel Altamirano" (2009). LSU Master's Theses. 3522. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3522 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DIDACTICISM AND RECONCILIATION: INSTRUCTIVE DISCOURSE IN THE NOVELS OF IGNACIO MANUEL ALTAMIRANO A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of Foreign Language and Literatures by Christopher M. Ray B.A., Louisiana State University, 2006 B.A., Louisiana State University, 2006 May, 2009 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my professor and thesis director, Alejandro Cortazar, for the unwaivering guidance, keen insights, and intellectual comraderie which he provided me and without which this work would have been impossible. I am also deeply ingratiated to my committee members, Christian Fernández-Palacios and Elena Castro, for their inestimable counsel and support. Additionally, I give thanks to Laura Martins for benefitting me with her friendship and for intellectually challenging me, and to Rafael Orozco for his understanding and his constant reminders that “la lengua pertenece a sus hablantes”. I would also like to give special thanks to Jon Cogburn, whose direction, advice and friendship have influenced my personal and academic growth to an immeasurable extent. I am indebted to all of the friends who supported me during the production of this thesis from the sanctuary of a tiny house off Olive St and who burned incense to all of the minor deities of 80‟s pro-wrestling fame for my success. Skylar, Karl, Richie, Chet, Miguel, Gretchen, Laura, Michael, Deanna, George, and so many others: the profundity of my gratitude is only rivaled by my love for you. Thank you to my parents, who taught me love through their works, showed me faith by example and supported the interrogation that keeps that faith alive. All thanks and praise to the Lord for all things seen and unseen, for all blessings received and those anticipated, for the earth to stand on and the Truth I journey toward. ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS…..…………………………………………………….........................ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………...iv CHAPTER I: TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF ALTAMIRANO‟S INSTRUCTIVE LITERARY DISCOURSE….…………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER II: ON IDEOLOGICAL FRACTURES AND MEXICAN NATIONAL EVOLUTION……………………………………………………………..……………………....8 2.1 Background for the Evolution of a Nation………………………………….…………...........8 2.2 Altamirano‟s Instructive Discourse and Social Education: A Lesson in Patria……………..16 CHAPTER III: LITERATURE FOR CHANGE: IDEOLOGICAL ADOPTION AND REARTICULATION…………………………………………………………………………….27 3.1 Freedom of Literature through Freedom in Literature………….…………………...............27 3.2 On the Nature of the Novel……...…………………………………………………………..32 CHAPTER IV: CLEMENCIA, OR BAD EDUCATION AND FOREIGN ADULATION………...………………………………………………………………………….35 CHAPTER V: RECONCILIATION, RENOVATION, AND REBIRTH………..……………..54 5.1 Blind Faith Forlorn, Patriotic Faith Reborn..………..………………………………………54 5.2 A New Hope: The Reconciliation of the Mexican Family……..…………………...............61 CHAPTER VI: HISTORICAL RUPTURE, TEXTUAL UNITY……………………………….73 6.1 A Nation Beleaguered………………………………………………………………………..73 6.2 Pressing Problems Past and Present……………………………………………………….…79 6.3 Bifurcation of Textual Reality and the Epic Engagement of Abstract Oppositions…………88 6.4 Didactic Unity: the Completion of Altamirano‟s Instructive Discourse………………….....99 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………....105 VITA…………………………………………………………………………………………....108 iii Abstract Ignacio Manuel Altamirano‟s novelística is of insurmountable importance for any study of the development of Nineteenth century Mexican literary culture and the Mexican liberal national narrative. Nevertheless, the ample criticism which treats Altamirano‟s novels has to date failed to grasp anything more than a tenuous unity latent in those works. This investigation provides a new framework for a unified interpretation of Altamirano‟s three most widely read and commented novels, Clemencia, La navidad en las montañas, and El Zarco. By way of an examination of historiographic-political narratives contemporaneous with the period informing the writing of those novels, in conjunction with an appeal to the understanding of the function of the novelistic form following the theory of M.M. Bakhtin and others, Altamirano‟s still controversial final novel will be shown to yield a new interpretation whose unitary function is dependent on all three of the novels examined herein. This unitary function will be shown to be constructed by way of the deployment of an innovatory instructive discourse which embraces all three of the novels examined and fundamentally determines their structure and content. As such, this investigation provides a new understanding of the works of this canonical author and propounds a more profound understanding of the interdependencies both literary and extraliterary that shape this part of the maestro‟s work and the innovatory instructive discourse upon which it is founded. iv Chapter I: Towards an Understanding of Altamirano’s Instructive Literary Discourse Ignacio Manuel Altamirano (Tixtla, Guerrero, Mexico, 1834 – San Remo, Italy, 1893) is an author of imprescindible importance for the understanding of the development of nineteenth- century Mexican literary culture and liberal nationalist discourse1. His foundational influence on incipient Mexican literary culture was not overlooked by the critics of his day, and as Erica Segre notes, “Literary historiography in Mexico during the latter half of the Porfiriato virtually canonized Altamirano as „el maestro‟, founder and president of epoch-making literary fraternities and cultural societies” (267). Recent criticism has continued to emphasize the importance of Altamirano‟s work to understanding the nationalist project in Mexico, declaring that he was one of the most actively involved intellectuals in the construction of the the nation and the Mexican citizen, and pointing towards the “discurso fundacional nacionalista” found in many of his literary works (Ruiz 23). This “foundational literary discourse” is often discussed in the criticism treating Altamirano‟s works, and there is a general agreement as to its nature: it is instructive, and as such always involves a thesis (Schmidt 115, Giron 162)2. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the theses implicit in his literary works were always of primary importance, a fact which sometimes resulted in the subordination of aesthetic and stylistic considerations to didactic ends (Schmidt 115, Sol 83, Brading 43)3. This discourse is recurrent in much of Altamirano‟s literary work, and specifically his novels, which played a central role in the advancement of that 1 Recognition of Altamirano‟s importance has led Doris Sommer to refer to him has “a patriotic institution in Mexican literature”, and Edward N. Wright-Rios acknowledges him as “one of the key figures of nineteenth-century Mexican nation building”. Cf. Wright-Rios, “Indian Saints and Nation-States: Ignacio Manuel Altamirano‟s Landscapes and Legends”, p. 47, and Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America, p. 232. 2 In the same passage Nicole Giron notes the insistent presence of a thesis in both Altamirano‟s journalistic and “propiamente” literary works: “En su labor periodística –considerable –en su labor propiamente literaria, siempre fue escritor de tesis. Siempre sostuvo una posición, una idea, una propuesta cultural o política, porque para él nunca hubo una frontera muy clara entre estos dos campos”. 3 As Pablo García notes, the subordination of aesthetic concerns to ideological considerations provoked the following criticism of Altamirano by Mariano Azuela: “Asimismo, [Azuela] delata la parcialidad del autor, obligado por „ciertas ideas acerca del papel que la novela debe desempeñar en la educación del pueblo […] a torcer y retorcer la verdad, a deformar los acontecimientos, las cosas, los personajes, encaminándolo todo con una idea fija‟”. Cf. García, “El Zarco vs. Los de abajo: El ideal denunciado o todos somos plateados”, p. 105. 1 instructive discourse by serving as its vehicle4. As such, and perhaps due in part to the fact that Clemencia (1869), La Navidad en las montañas (1871) and El Zarco (1888) are among the most read novels in Mexican literature, Altamirano‟s novels have been subjected to repeated critical scrutiny5. Nevertheless, because those novels tend to be analyzed in isolation, critics have yet to properly synthesize and unify an understanding of the instructive discourse present throughout them6. As a result, both the portrayal