José joaquín fernández de lizardi and the emergence of the Spanish American novel as national project

Modern Language Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 325-339

  Benitez Rojo, Antonio ^a  

^a AMHERST COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 80053596991     PISSN: 00267929     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00267929-57-2-325     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. See Goîc, "La novela hispanoamericana colonial," in Historia de la Ziternturn hispnnoamericana, vol. 1 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1982), 369-406.
2. See Manuel Briceño Jáuregui, Estudio hzsth-icem'tico de 'El desierto pfodigioso y prodigio del desierto"de don Pedro de Solis y Vuhzuelu (Bogotii: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1983)
3. Hector H. Orjuela, "El desierto prodigioso y prodigio del desierto, de Pedro de Solis y Valenzuela, primera novela hispanoamericana," Thesaurus 38, no. 2 ( 1983): 261-324.
4. I am indebted to numerous scholars who have written about the relationship between the novel and the national projects of Spanish America. I should clarify, however, that this article is above all the product of the dialogue that Doris Sommer and I carried on for several years at Amherst. In every respect these pages should be seen as a consequence of her initiative, insight, and intellectual curiosity. With regard to the topic, see Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 ).
5. The bibliography on this topic is extensive. I list the following works as a sample: José Juan Arrom, "Becerrillo: Comentarios a un pasaje narrativo del Padre Las Casas," in Homenaje a Luis Albert0 Sdncha (Lima: Universidad San Marcos, 1968), 41-4
6. Arrom, "Hombre y mundo en el Inca Garcilaso," in Certidumbre de Amhica: Estudios de ktras, folklme y cultura (Madrid: Gredos, 1971), 26-35
7. Arrom, "Precursores coloniales del cuento hispanoamericano: Fray Martin de Murtia y el idilio indianista," in El cuento hispanoamericano ante la m'tica, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walker (Madrid: Castalia, 1973), 24-36
8. Arrom, "Prosa novelistica del siglo XVII: Un 'caso ejemplar' del Pen3 virreinal," in Prosa hispanoamericana virreinal, ed. Raquel Chang-Rodriguez (Barcelona: Hispamkrica, 1978), 77- l00
9. Francisco Javier Cevallos, ed., Nawaciones cmtas de la América colonial (Salamanca: Colegio de Espana, 1991)
10. David Lagmanovich, "Los Naufragios de Alvar Núñez como construccih narrativa," Katucky Romance Quarterly 25 (1978): 27-37
11. Irving A. Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico: Seventeenth-Century Persons, Places, and Practices (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959)
12. Irving A. Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World ( 1949
13. José Luis Martínez, Pasajoos de Indias: Viajes transatlhnticos en el siglo XVI (Madrid: Alianza, 1983)
14. Enrique Pupo-Walker, "Sobre la configuración narrativa de las Comentarios reales," Revista Hispánica Moderna: Boletín del Instituto de las Españas 39, no. 3 (1976-77): 123-35
15. Pupo-Walker, "La reconstruccion imaginativa del pasado en El Carnero de Juan Rodríguez Freyle," Nueva Revista deFilologíu Hispunica 27 ( 1978) : 346-58
16. Pupo-Walker, "Sobre las mutaciones creativas de la historia en un texto del Inca Garcilaso," in Homenuje a Luis Leal, ed. Donald W. Bleznick and J. 0. Valencia (Madrid: Insula, 1978)
17. Pupo-Walker, "Sobre el discurso narrativo y sus referentes en 10s Comentarios reahs del Inca Garcilaso," in Chang-Rodriguez, Prom hispanoama'cana virreinal, 21 -41
18. Pupo-Walker, "La ficcion intercalada: Su relevancia y funciones en el curso de la historia," in Histmk, creacidn y profea'a en los textos del Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Madrid: Porrua, 1982), 149-93
19. Pupo-Walker, "Pesquisas para una nueva lectura de 10s NauJi-agios, de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca," Revista Zberoama'cana 140 (1987): 517-40
20. Pupo-Walker, "Los Naufr-ap~oes n la tradition narrativa hispanoamericana," in "Sección introductoria," in Alum Núñez Cabaa de Vaca: "Los Nauf;agios" (Madrid: Castalia, 1992), 141-54.
21. Pané, a monk, reached Hispaniola on the second voyage of Columbus (1493). In his Relación acerca, de las antigüedudes de 10s indios, included by Bartolomé de Las Casas in Historia de las Indias, Pané apologizes for his difficulty in writing in Spanish. See the critical edition by José Juan Arrom, Relacidn acerca de las antigudie;edades de 10s indios: El primer tratado esm'to en Amhica (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 1974).
22. See Edmundo O'Gorman, La invención de América (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economics, 1958).
23. Fernández de Lizardi, Chamorro y Dominguín, Diálogo jocosa'o sohe la independencia de la America (Mexico City: J. M. Benavente y socios, 1821 ), 17-8.
24. Jefferson Rea Spell has extracted from the hundreds of pamphlets Fernández de Lizardi published the following ideas: "He urged a more efficient form of municipal government-one that would provide sanitation, protection and regulation of trade, industry and public amusements. In his religious platform he laid down as fundamental planks complete religious freedom, the ownership of church property by the state, the barring of political offices to ecclesiastics, and the abolition of the Inquisition, ecclesiastical courts, tithing, and the fee system of the priests. He attacked the infallibility of papal power, celibacy, perpetual vows, and infant baptism; and argued for church services in Spanish so that the people might understand them. Above all he stressed the necessity of the submission of the Church to temporal authority. "Nor was he less radical, for his day, in the social reforms he advocated. The abolition of large estates, grants of land to the poor, and adequate wages for laborers were in his eyes fundamentals in a real republic. He exalted the dignity of labor; while he condemned, in no measured terms, the idleness of the beggar. The Pensador stood for compulsory education for all in state schools, free books and clothes when needed, the abolition of corporal punishment, higher standards for professional training, especially in medicine, and more attention to ethics in the legal branch. He asked for justice for all-rich and poor alike; for the guilty, he sought a reformed prison system which would uplift those forced to live under it" ( The Life and Works of José Joaquín Fernánda de Lizard [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931, 109-10).
25. Fernández de Lizardi, El periquillo sarniento, in Obrus, ed. Felipe Reyes Palacios, 9 vols. (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 1982), 9.414.
26. Palacios, prologue to Elperiquillo surniento, in Ferniindez de Lizardi, Obras 8. xvii.
27. See Salvador Bueno, "El negro en El Periquillo Sarniento: Antirracismo de Lizardi," Cuademos Americanos 183, no. 4 (1972): 124-39.
28. López Matoso, "Viaje de perico ligero al país de 10s moros": A Critical Edition of Antonio López Matoso's Unpublished Diary, 1816-1820, ed. James C. Tatum (New Orleans, La.: Tulane University, Middle American Research Institute, 1972).
29. Altamirano, Revistas literarias de México (Mexico City: F. Díaz de León y S. White, 1868), 39.
30. l5 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 34-5.
31. Fernández de Lizardi, Vida y hechos del famoso caballero don Catrín de la Fachenda, in Ohas, 7.358.
32. Fernández de Lizardi did not hide the fact that his novel was an adaptation of Cadalso's work. Indeed, the first edition of iVoches lristes included, as an appendix, Nocha Luguhes.