Literary historiography as essay expression and critical strategy: The literary life of Mexico (1917) by Luis G. Urbina

Abstract

In 1910, while the celebrations of the first centenary of Mexico independence were taking place, Luis G. Urbina, Pedro Henríquez Ureña and Nicolás Rangel published the first part of the Antología del Centenario. It was one of the first systematic approaches to Mexican literature, based on an aesthetic and at the same time representative criterion. Henríquez Ureña began here his long reflection on the literary history in Latin America, which would lead him to establish a model of periodization in Las corrientes literarias de la América hispánica (1946 in its first version in English). In contrast, Luis G. Urbina, poet and chronicler from late modernism, dealt with literary history from the sentimental sphere in a series of five lectures given at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires in 1917. The The result was La vida literaria en México. In this article I am interested in analyzing the construction of the historical discourse that Urbina puts into circulation as a critical strategy to highlight the current moment of Mexican
literature. Publicitary estrategy, but also self- affirmation, La vida literaria en México represents the defense of a job in the context of the modernization of cultural policies in the Mexican nation.