There were two main literary genres popular in Peru in the 1800\u2019s: Romanticism and Costumbrism. Romanticism was based on expressive rather than literal renderings of situations, and was a response against the scientific explanations of natural phenomena. Instead, Romanticism believed that the artistic experience should be grounded in intense emotion that surfaces at times in the face of raw wilderness, for example. It makes sense that Romanticism became popular in Peru because of the attention Latin Americans placed on the senses and on nature\u2019s role in everyday life. With its focus on details, colors, and anything seemingly trivial that would aid in capturing a particular moment in time, Costumbrism was best known for its illustrative, literary perception of daily Hispanic life. It shares similarities with realism and Romanticism in that it emphasizes expression and emotion. At first, Costumbrism was primarily thought of as Spanish from 1700-1800. When the Spanish brought it to the continent, however,\u00a0 it was adapted by Peruvians, who put a new spin on it by intertwining it with their own indigenous roots and folkloric tone.<\/p>\n
Until the late 1880\u2019s, literature in Peru was traditionally historical, and often based on history, myth, or legend. In 1888, a new wave of modernist writing surfaced. Around this time, the United States was victorious over Spain. Peruvians and people throughout the former colonies empathized with Spain, and began to have reservations about the United States and the power it held.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2012\/11\/Jos\u00e9_Enrique_Rod\u00f3_2.jpg\" "\\"Jos\u00e9_Enrique_Rod\u00f3\\"")
<\/a>Author Jos\u00e9 Enrique Rod\u00f3 (1871-1917)<\/p><\/div>\n
One famous author expressed views of many in Peru. His name was Jos\u00e9 Enrique Rod\u00f3, who befriended many great thinkers of the time to inform his writing. One of these was the Peruvian Jos\u00e9 de la Riva-Ag\u00fcero. Another was Rub\u00e9n Dar\u00edo, <\/strong>who sowed the seeds for modernism, the Spanish-American literary movement popular in the late nineteenth century. Rod\u00f3 wrote an essay titled Ariel<\/em> in 1900 that took inspiration from Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest. Ariel <\/em>is a modernist essay in which Rod\u00f3 examined the state of Latin America, reflecting back on the 19th<\/sup> century and calling on readers to move forward into the 1900\u2019s with an eye toward developing their minds and spirits. He called for an end to pragmatic utilitarianism and spoke against the draw that he predicted North America would hold for the coming generations. The essay urges Latin-American youth to develop a regional identity and to hold true to their country\u2019s roots. Ariel<\/em> was a response to the skepticism many felt after the Spanish defeat by the United States, and voiced the fears of many that the North\u2019s power held a very real threat to the culture and identity of Latin America.<\/p>\n In the early 1900\u2019s, the Indigenismo trend became popular. Ciro Alegr\u00eda, C\u00e9sar Vallejo, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas, and Mario Vargas Llosa were part of this movement, as well as a great many surfacing intellectuals and public thinkers.<\/p>\n Peru\u2019s literary scene suffered in the 1980\u2019s and 90\u2019s when vicious guerilla warfare took nearly 70,000 lives. Now, Lima is rekindling its literary scene, and has a reputation of one of the most popular scenes in Latin America. Peruvian writers have grown and excelled, taking their nation\u2019s war and hardships and expressing themselves through the realms of literature. Many of these new or reemerging writers deal with war, the dangers of combating terrorism, and the implications to democracy when fighting terrorism.<\/p>\n I. Ricardo Palma<\/strong><\/p>\n Ricardo Palma lived from 1833 to 1919. His two most significant contributions to the Peruvian literary movement were his creation of a national library and his founding of the literary genre of tradiciones. Palma was skilled from a very young age. In his teens he edited a satirical publication called El Diablo<\/em>, or The Devil. After that he went on to write in various forms, including poetry and romantic fiction. He made use of his interest in history with his book about the Viceroyalty of Peru and the nature of the Spanish\u00a0 Inquisition. This way of writing, based off of the Spanish word for tradition, involves blending fiction and history. The purpose of these was to educate in a playful way, though this may connote diverging slightly from historical fact. Palma strove to write a type of history that could be true to his country and the Peruvian consciousness at the time. He wrote in an era when his contemporaries were composing didactic literature and gave credence to elite culture. Instead, Palma wrote stories that functioned both as entertainment and as thought-provoking and educational, though some of the facts were not entirely correct. His work deviated enough from \u2018true\u2019 fact that it was not considered history, and his writing style\u2019s roots grew from the emotion-driven aesthetics of Romanticism yet drew on the minute details and creation of particular moments in time that Costumbrism inspired. The tales he created focused on the colonialist past and the republic. This style of historical literature reminds me of Hemingway\u2019s view that writing could be a way of expressing truth in a more sensuously accurate and profound way that took hold of the reader and generated an emotive response.<\/p>\n “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Ernest Hemingway<\/p>\n Palma developed a large following through his writing, but also contributed to his country in another meaningful way: in the public sphere.\u00a0 He was chosen to be a member of Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Navy, and served in the navy as well. He accomplished one of his most lasting contributions to Peru, however,\u00a0 after the War of the Pacific when he was chosen as the director of the National Library of Peru. Chilean troops had occupied Peru for over three years in this bloody war, and had targeted the prestigious library as a site for demolition. Conflict from this war and from the perceived brutality of Chile affects relations between the Bolivia, Peru, and Chile to this day. Palma took advantage of his ties with the President of Chile at the time, Domingo Santa Mar\u00eda to salvage over 10,000 books and other works that over time brought the Peruvian National Library to its former glory as one of the grandest libraries on the continent, with minimal funding required. His position as director granted him access to its many historical documents and manuscripts, as well as many works of fiction, which he used for his research.<\/p>\n II. Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas Altamirano<\/strong><\/p>\n Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas Altamirano c. 1960, courtesy of Archivo de la Biblioteca Nacional del Per\u00fa<\/p><\/div>\n Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas Altamirano blended the profession of anthropologist and author together, using both Spanish and Quechua to inform his writing. He was a significant figure in many ways in the early 1900\u2019s, chiefly due to his involvement in the Indigenist literature movement that echoed throughout Latin America. He believed that the Conquest had ended indigenous culture and would spell out a disastrous and oppressive future for the indigenous peoples of Peru.<\/p>\n Arguedas was Mestizo, and exemplified the common man growing up with a mix of Spanish and indigenous blood. He was born into poverty among campesinos in the southern Andes, and spoke Quechua as a child. His writing both acknowledges and investigates one major aspect of Peruvian life that continues to this day\u2014the marginalized role that the native peoples of Peru play, and the resulting ethnic tensions this engenders. The content of much of his work was influenced by his connections to nature, and the way in which he expressed the importance of the feminine in Quechua tradition in contrast to traditional ways in which Westernized culture views femininity.<\/p>\n To express this tension, Arguedas composed fiction in a relatively new way, blending the rhyme, syntax, and diction of Quecha into his Spanish writing. He utilized what he knew, and the poverty and entrenched feelings of inferiority that come with being part of a marginalized population. The result: his first book, titled Yawar Fiesta<\/em>, or Blood Festival<\/em>. His anthropological university education and background likely influenced how he thought of languages linguistically, and also how he conceptualized the tension between Westernized civilization and indigenous tradition.<\/p>\n Arguedas continued to write about themes such as exploitation of native peoples, discontent at the face of oppression, tradition, and violence. His last novel was a chilling, never finished piece in which he conveyed the inner turmoil he felt. The book\u00a0 is set in a port city called Chimbote and titled El zorro de arriba y el zorro de abajo<\/em>, or The Fox from Up Above and the Fox from Down Below<\/em>. In it he chronicles the tortures of a man who is dissatisfied with his life to such an extreme that he kills himself. The novel reflects on the destructive effects on modernization (similar to Rod\u00f3\u2019s Ariel)<\/em>, and weaves several of Arguedas\u2019 own journals into the narrative. El zorro <\/em>gave voice to the struggle that many Quechua and Mestizo peoples felt.<\/p>\n Arguedas ended his own life before\u00a0 he could finish the novel, succumbing to demons of his own in his quest to express the woes of a nation plagued by a history of destruction. It was 1969, and he was only 32 years old. In notes from El zorro<\/em>, Arguedas described feeling depressed because, as someone of mixed blood, he was discriminated against in both native and contemporary worlds.\u00a0 This tension and feeling of struggling to belong in a world that did not accept him, coupled with earlier psychological damage he had received, represented in a way the difficult and harsh environment that Peru can be. It illustrated the two opposing undercurrents of Peru, its roots in ancient native civilizations and its ties to Westernized culture that many fear will crush these traditional roots in favor of a more modernized identity.<\/p>\n III. Magda Portal<\/strong><\/p>\n Magda Portal was a Peruvian rebel relatively unknown in the United States. She chose to live as a public figure, and gained a reputation in Peru for being a gifted poet and a determined social activist. She is emblematic as one of Peru\u2019s great figures in the fight for the marginalized female in the mid 1900\u2019s.\u00a0 As a public intellectual, she embodies the spirit a female and revolutionary fighting for justice in the 1900\u2019s. She overcame much poverty and hardship to arrive at this point, which no doubt fueled her creative zeal and imagination.<\/p>\n Portal was born into a middle class family in 1901 in Lima. She was born at a time in which Peru was drastically underdeveloped, even in comparison to neighboring countries. She started writing short stories, poems, and even longer pieces when she was a girl. Although she did have this middle class background, her father passed away when she was young, and her family fell into extreme poverty. She worked hard to help support her family, but still managed to take night classes at the University of San Marcos, where she came into contact with political ideas that would have great influence on her writing. As a young woman in the 1920\u2019s, Magda became acquainted with Ces\u00e1r Vallejo and other writers at the time, who were invested in expression of marginalized voices and in the struggle to raise the indigenous out of poverty in the face of increases in stratification of wealth. For example, some individual landholders owned three quarters of a million acres, with agro-business plantations on the coast in which workers were paid very little, perhaps pennies a day.<\/p>\n There was in the early 1920\u2019s both a feeling of desolate hopelessness and one of the possibility of rebellion. The radicals wanted to improve these conditions.\u00a0 Especially in Lima, students often protested. She moved from Peru to Bolivia and began working for leftist newspapers and writing more political literature in 1925, the same year she gave birth to her daughter, Gloria.<\/p>\n Portal became a member of Alizanza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), and began publishing poetry and literary journals. She worked on Jos\u00e9 Carlos Mari\u00e1tegui\u2019s publication Amauta, but was later arrested in 1927 because of allegations that this was a communist organization. She was sent to Cuba, and eventually ended up being deported to Mexico, where she linked up with other Peruvian activists. She joined the Peruvian Aprista Party, or PAP, and led several other committees and organizations in the quest for women\u2019s educational and political rights. Her writing was more politically motivated at this time, and she published essays and other political assessments that placed her even more in the public sphere.<\/p>\n Her political activism again brought her trouble in the 1930\u2019s. She went into hiding, as did many of her friends. Her sisters and mother were held for nearly half a year in jail when they would not provide information on her location. She was eventually arrested and imprisoned at the hands of Cerro in his rounding up of PAP organizers. Portal wrote many poems in the Santo Tom\u00e1s jail, occupying herself for 500 days with her imagination and plans for the future.\u00a0 Her novel, La Trampa<\/em> (The Trap), analyzes APRA from a critical perspective and speaks about her time in prison.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n These three authors all sought to use language in conjunction with their own experiences as part of a marginalized people in a nation in which the striking undercurrents of the past and the drive toward a modernized, Western ideal of the future continue to create tension. From the famous Ricardo Palma to the tragic Arguedas to the heroic and unrelenting Portal, these three writers comprise a cross-section of the intellectual author in the twentieth century and to delve into the history of the literary movements in Peru. They evince the passionate drive, intellectual fervor, and desire for social change in the face of injustice that characterized Peruvian fiction and poetry.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Bibliography:<\/span><\/p>\n Hawley, John C. Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and the Search for a Language of Justice<\/em>.1992 Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association<\/span><\/a>. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/pss\/1316713<\/a><\/p>\n Henderson, Helene & Pederson, Jay P. 2000. 20th-century literary movements dictionary.<\/p>\n Higgens, J. 1987. A History of Peruvian Literature. <\/em>Liverpool : F. Cairns, 1987.<\/p>\n Lambright, Anne. Creating the Hybrid Intellectual: Subject, Space and the Feminine in the Narrative of Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas. <\/em>Retrieved online 5\/09\/10.<\/p>\n Rowe, William. Competing Rituals: Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas and the Voice of Native Andean Culture. <\/strong>Third World Quarterly<\/em>, Vol. 11, No. 4, Ethnicity in World Politics (Oct., 1989), pp. 274-278. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.<\/a> Retrieved online 5\/09\/10. http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/3992345<\/a><\/p>\n Scott, Nina M.\u2028 Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America (review)<\/em>\u2028MFS Modern Fiction Studies – Volume 43, Number 2, Summer 1997, pp. 492-494. Retrieved online 5\/09\/10.<\/p>\n Shaw, Donald L.<\/a> (1998), The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction<\/em>, Albany: SUNY Press, ISBN<\/a>\u00a00-7914-3826-0<\/a><\/p>\n Stucchi, Santiago P. La depression de Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Arguedas <\/em>Revista de Neuro-Psiquiatria. <\/em>September 2003. Volume 66. No. 3. Retrieved online 5\/09\/10. http:\/\/sisbib.unmsm.edu.pe\/BvRevistas\/Neuro_psiquiatria\/v66_n3\/Pdf\/a01.pdf\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Tompkins, Cynthia & Foster, David William. Notable twentieth-century Latin American women: a biographical dictionary. Retrieved online 5\/09\/10. http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=lrLI2BJkPu4C&lpg=PR9&ots=x6Ga-fPv5S&dq=magda%20portal%20biography&lr&pg=PP1<\/a><\/p>\n Weaver, Kathleen. 2009. Peruvian Rebel: The World of Magda Portal, with a Selection of Her Poems. Penn State Press. Retrieved online 5\/07\/10. http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=viOmLKaPwiAC&lpg=PR9&ots=83iLJdqMKc&dq=magda%20portal%20biography&lr&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=magda%20portal%20biography&f=false<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Maria Anderson The literary movement in Peru played an integral role in creating social change, expressing and forging an identity on both the national and the individual level, and analyzing the past in terms of preparing for what lay … Continue reading <\/a>