Abstract
The nineteenth century’s crisis of thought and feeling produced by accelerated technological advance found its artistic manifestation in Hispano-American decadent literature. This paper analyzes how three modernist fantastic tales express the fin-the-siecle feeling as an attack on the homodiegetic narrator’s cognitive dimension. This attack is possible because of the collision between supernatural events and rational logic that characterizes fantastic literature. In «Los muertos a hora fija» (1893) by Carlos Olivera, «El caso de la senorita Amelia» (1894) by Ruben Dario and «La Granja Blanca» (1904) by Clemente Palma, science, occultism and philosophy, respectively, are shown as epistemological constructs that should allow us to know and explain the world; nonetheless, the three of them are overcome by a disturbing event that characters are unable to explain by means of their rational logic or the area of study in which they are experts.
Highlights
The nineteenth century’s crisis of thought and feeling produced by accelerated technological advance found its artistic manifestation in Hispano-American decadent literature
In «Los muertos a hora fija» (1893) by Carlos Olivera, «El caso de la señorita Amelia» (1894) by Rubén Darío and «La Granja Blanca» (1904) by Clemente Palma, science, occultism and philosophy, respectively, are shown as epistemological constructs that should allow us to know and explain the world; the three of them are overcome by a disturbing event that characters are unable to explain by means of their rational logic or the area of study in which they are experts
A finales del siglo xix fue necesario buscar bases espirituales distintas a las tradicionales en Occidente para afrontar los conflictos emocionales e intelectuales que se derivaron de los cambios introducidos por la modernidad
Summary
La crisis del pensar y del sentir, que el acelerado avance tecnológico produjo a finales del siglo xix en Europa y América, encontró en la literatura decadentista hispanoamericana una de sus manifestaciones artísticas. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar cómo tres cuentos modernistas de corte fantástico expresan el sentir de fin de siglo bajo la forma de un ataque a la dimensión cognitiva de los narradores homodiegéticos. Dicho ataque es posible gracias al choque entre lo sobrenatural y lo racional, propio de la literatura fantástica. En «Los muertos a hora fija» (1883) de Carlos Olivera, «El caso de la señorita Amelia» (1894) de Rubén Darío y «La granja blanca» (1900) de Clemente Palma, la ciencia, el ocultismo y la filosofía, respectivamente, se presentan como construcciones epistemológicas mediante las cuales debería ser posible conocer y explicar el mundo; sin embargo, estas son superadas por una realidad apabullante, representada en un acontecimiento perturbador que los personajes no consiguen comprender ni desde la lógica racional ni desde el área de estudio en la que son expertos. THE UNEXPLAINED WORLD: FIN-DE-SIÈCLE SPIRIT IN HISPANO-AMERICAN FANTASTIC MODERNIST TALE
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