Journal Article

CHAPTER 11: Mexico City's Dissonant Modernity and the Marketplace Baroque: Salvador Novo's Nueva grandeza mexicana and Bernardo de Balbuena's La grandeza mexicana

Kaup, Monika

2017

Overview

[...]these include its European origins as the expression of Absolutism and the Counter-Reformation, its Atlantic crossings as the cultural instrument of Iberian colonialism, as well as the New World baroque-the rebellious adaptation of the European baroque at the hands of 17th and 18th century Latin American artists who appropriated the art of the colonizer and turn it into an expression of their own: in José Lezama Lima's formulation, in the Americas, the baroque became the art of counterconquest (arte de contraconquista). [...]the Contemporános' efforts to \"link up Mexican letters with the main currents of contemporary European and American art and literature\" (Verani 124-125),3 constituted a contentious position in the Mexico of the 1920s and 30s. According to Rama, the characteristics of mannerism-the work's epigonic position in relation to the European literary canon, the preference for artifice and anti-realism rather than naturalism, and a transgressive formalism, such as the use of hyperbole and ingenious conceits-serve as tools for Balbuena to signpost his poem's critical difference from European models. [...]to Balbuena, whose chapter on religion offers a long catalogue of convents and religious societies, Novo barely devotes one page to religion, covering not institutions but popular religious practices during Holy Week and the Day of the Dead. [...]the review of ministries and government bodies occurs by way of a walking tour of the centre that also attends to the visible effects of administration on residents' lives, such as access to markets and water. According to Guido, the second cycle of conquest occurs in the 19th century-ironically, the century of Latin American Independence-when new Latin American states are once again subjected to European hegemony through the positivist ideologies adopted by the new criollo political elites in their efforts to modernize their young nations.

• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc
• Subject: Colonialism / Ideology / Literary canon / Literature / Modernity / Poetry / Politics / Religion / Rhetorical figures