Giving shape to the past: Pre-columbia in nineteenth-century Mexican literary journals

Adam T Sellen

doi:10.1590/1981.81222017000200006

Abstract

Abstract The literary journal “El Museo Mexicano” (1843-1845) marked a watershed in Mexican nationalism, and sought to shape aspirations of an elite segment of nineteenth-century Mexican society eager to claim a post-colonial identity by exploring the cultural and historical strands that were combined in the young Republic. The editors solicited contributions from Mexican authors on a wide range of subjects, from descriptions of contemporary provincial life to accounts of recent discoveries of pre-Hispanic monuments and artifacts. The aim was to provide a more complete and up-to-date image of Mexico, rich in anecdotal detail and lavishly illustrated. In this paper I will explore how this new literary platform argued for the validity of archaeological investigation in the American context, and ultimately shaped how Mexicans perceived their past. Though my focus is primarily on the articles in “El Museo Mexicano” I will also analyze some of the visual tropes and traditions, from the picturesque to the grotesque that inspired illustration in other Mexican journals of the same genre.

Highlights

The spectrum of early archaeological illustration in Mexico is a broad one, ranging from the amateur renderings of ancient cities and temples found in works produced by the Spanish friars in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the more informed and credible drawings of ruins and artefacts that surged at the end of the eighteenth century, motivated in part by discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum and to a heightened interest in antiquarianism fomented by an enlightened Spanish royalty
Even works by sons of Mexico on the history of archaeology will often devote more attention to the pioneering foreigners than the national or provincial views that impacted on subsequent advances in the discipline and, more importantly, on the politics of archaeology (Bernal, 1980)
In this paper I will examine a series of articles on archaeology that appeared around the mid-nineteenth century in Mexican literary journals, a veritable collage of illustrated texts that are difficult to classify: they are at once romantic, aesthetic, scientific, patriotic, scholarly, and even whimsical

Summary

Introduction

The spectrum of early archaeological illustration in Mexico is a broad one, ranging from the amateur renderings of ancient cities and temples found in works produced by the Spanish friars in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the more informed and credible drawings of ruins and artefacts that surged at the end of the eighteenth century, motivated in part by discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum and to a heightened interest in antiquarianism fomented by an enlightened Spanish royalty. In this paper I will examine a series of articles on archaeology that appeared around the mid-nineteenth century in Mexican literary journals, a veritable collage of illustrated texts that are difficult to classify: they are at once romantic, aesthetic, scientific, patriotic, scholarly, and even whimsical.

Results

Conclusion