Nineteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

Research on 19th-century Latina/o literature offers readers a burgeoning and flourishing field of study. Nevertheless, while scholars have made multiple critical interventions in the study of 19th-century Latina/o literature, the field simultaneously remains ripe for new research because of the depth and breadth of the subject and its continually expanding literary and historical archive. Three major factors define the study of 19th-century Latina/o literature and differentiate it from other areas of study. First, while Latina/os did write in English during the 19th century, many works were also written in Spanish and other languages. This was due to the transamerican, transnational and transatlantic experiences of many of the writers in question. Consequently, while these writings have been excerpted and translated in anthologies, the corpus by and large remains unpublished and untranslated. A second factor concerns the terminology used to refer to Latina/os of the 19th century. Latina/o and Hispanic are both terms in general use in the 20th-century, each with its own historical and contextual demarcations. Both have proven to be insufficient inasmuch as they are insufficiently precise, and as a result different terms have been coined to identify the authors and figures under study. This terminological issue signals the indispensability of a thorough knowledge of the historical and political concerns of the countries from which the authors in question originate. To understand and contextualize the lived realities of Latina/os of the 19th century and the literature they produced, readers must situate the writers within not only US history, but Latin American, European, African, Asian and indigenous histories as well, since these authors negotiated the political realities of varying nations, geographies, and peoples concurrently, while also negotiating multiple racial and ethnic experiences. As the researcher, student, or general reader explores and studies 19th-century Latina/o literature, he or she will find that academic and historically defined terms are challenged by the 19th-century archive and by the lived experiences of the individuals who produced it. A third variable is genre. While those interested in 19th-century Latina/o literature will encounter such traditional literary genres as novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and essays, they must also take into account more diverse sources such as newspapers, pamphlets, political tracts, broadsides, government documents, diplomatic records, speeches, travel diaries, journals, Spanish readers and grammar books, personal correspondence, maps, and corridos. In short, those interested in the literary manifestations of Latina/os in the 19th century will find a vast and growing archive of materials that document not only the literary history of Latina/os, but also the experiences and cultural expressions of Latina/o communities of that era.