Beyond the Aesthetics and Social Contextualisation of José Hernández’s Martín Fierro: An Unmasking of the Myth of the Literary Creator and the Literary Creation
Date
2017
Authors
Almiron, Michelle
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Abstract
Martín Fierro by José Hernández has enjoyed much success since
its publication in 1872: first, as the popular gaucho poem that
excited the rural inhabitants of a newly formed Argentina and
launched the literary and political career of its author; second,
(from 1913 on) as a literary juggernaut that successive
generations of Argentine writers have returned to again and again
- to find the essence of ‘Argentinity’, to align their
literary career with the gaucho poem or to rail against its
central position in the nation’s literary landscape. Such has
been the reaction to the gaucho poem that many literary
commentators and critics have struggled with the question of
‘How do you solve a literary problem like Martín Fierro?’
Pierre Bourdieu’s The Rules of Art provides a critical and
complete approach to literary criticism that moves away from the
paradigm of literary and social readings of texts that have
dominated the discipline. It provides a multi-layered and organic
sociological approach to understanding the literary classics of a
nation as well as the national literary canons that seem to rise
up from literary fields both slowly and spontaneously.
This dissertation endeavours to clarify the principles for the
study of literature using the sociological tools and analysis of
literary texts and fields espoused by Bourdieu in The Rules of
Art in order to apply it to the case study of Hernández’s
gaucho poem and the literary field of the Argentine nation during
the period of nation formation.
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Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, Jose Hernandez, Martin Fierro, Argentine Literature, gaucho poem
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