Ficción y verdad en Esteban Echeverría

Resumen

This thesis presents a new and necessary approach to Esteban Echeverría’s work and life, as well as the influence exerted by this renowned author, who played a key role in the configuration of Argentinian and Latin American identities. I undertake an analysis of the disentanglement and uncovering of fiction from reality as regards Echevarría’s personality and writings. A first objective was to categorize Echevarría’s work –from both the literary and the political spheres –, including not only the author’s written texts but also all of the paratextual content (e.g. prologues, acknowledgements, footnotes, or caution notes). Apart from being dated and identified with respect to their degree of literariness, as well as the issues and topics covered in them, these writings have also been examined against the context of their production and/or publication, i.e., an explicit and close connection has been drawn between the author’s personal circumstances when writing each of the texts and the literary and intellectual trends at that time, along with the socio-political context, and how the work was received by both the general public and critics. Within this milieu, the analysis of the relative presence of fiction and reality in the works of this notable leader and writer has revealed the commonalities that point to the close connection between Latin American Literature and History, whose origins date back precisely to the first half of 19th-century Argentina. Thus, apart from the ideologue’s obession with creating a national identity that would include its own literature, we can also see how literature can serve not only as an extraordinary and reliable source to history but also embody the reality Esteban Echevarría envisioned for Argentina. The second aim of this thesis is to bring into focus the gender issue, using an approach to both fictional and real dialogue that the writer held with the female romanticists of his generation. Firstly, the the most influential women writers and their contribution to nationalist principles are reviewed and a link established with the masculine characters who lead the Argentinian political and cultural spheres in the first half of the nineteenth century. Once the framework has been created, the rest of the study deals with Esteban Echevarría’s discourse around women, which is found to be polarised between the romantic ideal of women and the redefinition of feminine roles that the writer wanted to bestow on women in the new society he was bringing to life. Thus, the second part of this dissertation can be considered, from a different stance, to be the articulation –both from the point of view of literary critcism and historical angles- of the dichotomy between fiction and reality akin to Echeverria’s thought and world. This way, a gap is filled for a theme which had been neglected by critics up to now, and the way is paved for future research that may be carried out with different and complementary perspectives, allowing for a better reformulation and description of our past.