Abstract
Abstract In this article, I analyse Georg Lukács’s theories of realism in relation to Alberto Blest Gana’s work. For this purpose, I explore two essays that have greatly contributed to locating the Chilean author’s novels within the realm of literary realism. The texts chosen for my study are Jaime Concha’s prologue to the Martín Rivas edition by the Ayacucho Library and Ricardo A. Latcham’s essay “Blest Gana y la novela realista” [Blest Gana and the Realist Novel]. Concha and Latcham find appropriate categories for the interpretation of Blest Gana’s work in Lukács’s essays. In their readings, they accurately apply notions such as the selective principle or the typology of characters. However, while using those insights as a shared critical platform, they arrive at different interpretations of what is meant by realism. The article elucidates the role played by Concha and Latcham in the Chilean intellectual field and shows how literary genealogies inform their critical projects.
Highlights
What kind of consensus exists among critics on the category of literary realism? And, for our purposes, what aspects of literary realism have critics deployed to read the novels by Alberto Blest Gana (1830–1920)? the question raises a problem of definitions, it aims to discuss the variants – partly circumspect, other times diffuse, and almost always without revealing any theoretical norms – that the very notion of realism tends to signify in literary criticism
The texts chosen for my analysis are Jaime Concha’s prologue to the Martín Rivas edition by the Ayacucho Library and Ricardo A
Concha resorts to this at the end of his prologue, deciding to transcribe an extensive paragraph found in Lukács’s Prolegomena to a Marxist Aesthetic. He makes reference to the shaping of typical figures that, in one way or another, must always be interrelated with their counter-types organised according to a hierarchy that supports the composition of the work itself. It is, following Concha, “The best conceptual synthesis that we propose of the reading of Martín Rivas.”
Summary
What kind of consensus exists among critics on the category of literary realism? And, for our purposes, what aspects of literary realism have critics deployed to read the novels by Alberto Blest Gana (1830–1920)? the question raises a problem of definitions, it aims to discuss the variants – partly circumspect, other times diffuse, and almost always without revealing any theoretical norms – that the very notion of realism tends to signify in literary criticism. It is possible to postulate that, recognising (as we will further along) the strong link between his essay and the theoretical principles espoused by the texts of Lukács, it may have seemed unnecessary for Concha to insist on the realist character of Blest Gana’s work, since, as conceived by Lukács himself, the only possibility available for a novel was to be “essentially realist.” These theoretical borrowings, revealed by various direct appeals and organised in a reading that shows how Concha had broadly digested the procedures specified by Lukács to define the aesthetics of literary realism, are applied to Martín Rivas’s narrative operations. Latcham’s reading significantly departs from the critical perspectives produced by Concha, who, deploying the category of “what is essential,” linked his interpretations to a Lukácsian theory of realism For his part, Latcham avoids interpreting Blest Gana’s novels from a viewpoint of essentiality, directing his examination instead to immediate reflections considered by him to be recurring motifs in the Chilean author’s work. His interpretation accounts for the heterogeneity of Blest Gana’s oeuvre and, an evolving realism, where an autonomisation of details keeps favouring the conditions for a truthful representation, where naturalism is retained within the boundaries of a filial relationship, and, where cuadros costumbristas add great value to a concretisation of reality
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