The Johns Hopkins University Press

Historicity and Literariness: Problems in the Literary Criticism of Spanish American Colonial Texts Author(s): Margarita Zamora Source:
MLN, Vol. 102, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1987), pp. 334-346 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905693 . Accessed: 27/10/2013 19:47
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Problems and Literariness: Historicity of Spanish Criticism in the Literary AmericanColonialTexts

Zamora Margarita
One need only skim the table of contents of any anthology of Spanish American literatureof the colonial period to realize that of the selectionsappear to belong to the fieldof histothe majority riography rather than to literature.And if we read beyond the to findthatthe it mightbe surprising to the textsthemselves, titles, number of works of historicalintentactuallygrows. If we were to limitourselves to those textswhich were produced withthe intention of writing"literature"(as the term is commonlyunderstood today, that is, as imaginativeor creative writingwith a primarily aestheticpurpose), we would need to reduce the listby more than half, retaining littleother than lyricpoetry and a few theatrical pieces. This scenario underscoresa problem withinthe fieldof colonial literarystudies that as criticswe have a tendencyto avoid or ignore. It also raises importantquestions regardingour criticaland pedagogical mission, since the classificationof these texts as litIn fact,a erary colors all of our thoughtson theirinterpretation. of these fundamental contradictionarises from the classification textsas "literature."Because so many of the textswe consider literary today were not so at the time they were writtenin the fifteenth through eighteenthcenturies,our criticaland pedagogical work often is performed from an essentiallyanachronisticperspective.
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To begin to address the problem, two preliminaryquestions must be posed. The firstis theoreticalin nature-"What constiIn what followsI do not pretend to give a comtutesliterariness?" answer to such a complex issue; I simplyhope to plete or definitive suggest a useful way to approach another less ambitiousquestion tied nonethelessto the criticaland pedagogical that is inextricably problem outlined in the opening paragraphs. This question concerns the cultural and literaryhistoryof Spanish America: Why texts incorporated into the cultural catewere these non-literary and how was this achieved? It has been gory "colonial literature", pointed out, with increasing frequencyof late, that Hispanic littends to ignore to its detrimentthe theoreticalpreerarycriticism are based. suppositions on which its analyses and interpretations awareness of In addition, I would like to suggestthata metacritical the hermeneuticaltraditionof which it is an integralpart is as essential as establishingthe theoreticalparameters in the study of colonial texts. In what follows,I will discuss some of the consequences this situationhas had for the exegesis and interpretation of colonial narrativein particular,and to outline a possible critical and contrato begin to address the resultingincongruities strategy dictions. has narrativeas literature of colonial historical The classification formal fact that literary been criticallyproblematicowing to the characteristics-considered absolute and immutable-have been bestowed upon it in order to explain and justifyitsinclusionin the literarycanon. Thus, criticshave often found themselvesobliged regardingthe supposed simaffirmations to insiston anachronistic genre, or to of thisor thatcolonial textto a modern literary ilarity invent a series of literaryvalues which they can then "discover" to in these texts.For example, some have attributed retrospectively the presence of blacks or Amerindians in the earliest colonial writingsan essential or inherent American literariness.Yet they from as distinct forgetthat the concept of an American literature, its European counterparts,only began to take shape under the work aestheticwhichdemanded thatthe literary aegis of a literary depict the social landscape. During the earlycolonial period, however, the presence of indigenous or Africanelementsin a literary text was considered anti-aesthetic-or at the veryleast artistically problematic.Thus, Ercilla struggledagainst the objections he anticipated from his European public, adapting the Araucanians to westernepic norms to such a degree that littleof the mapuche is
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leftin these charactersbeyond some phonetictracesin theirSpanishized names. Because literatureis ultimately a culturalcategory,a strictly formalist definitionof literarinessproves inadequate. Viewed from this perspective,the concept of literariness does not lend itselfto an absolute and immutable definitionsince it responds to social circumstances and conditionswhichare variable.To put it another way,the categoryof literature is an ideological product of a particular historical moment. Changing social and cultural needs are usually accompanied by modifications in the coordinatesof the literary field. Thus, while the original typologyof the text can be seen as a reflectionof its contentand itssyntactical characteristics, it is the social functionof the text that ultimately determinesits cultural classification.' New genres are born on the fringesof literatureonly to be assimilated at a later date. By way of example, let us consider a recent and familiarcase-science fiction. Justa few years ago these texts were not considered literary, in spite of the fact that they belonged to the field of narrativefiction.They were classifiedas popular reading matteror "low" literature, if you will,as distinct fromliteratureproper. But recently a process of re-evaluationand re-classification of science fictiontexts took place. It was carried out through institutionalchannels by means of a series of academic, editorial,and journalisticmechanisms,to mentiononly the most obvious examples. The effects of such a process are discernible in the reading listsof university courses dedicated to the study of science fictionas a literary genre, in the listsof prestigiouspublishers who print science fictionbooks in hard-cover therebyassuring their longevity, and in the favorable reviewspublished by literary magazines and newspaper book-review sections.All are instrumentsat the service of the process of canonization. It should be noted that this process implies a value judgment, as well as selection based on the formal characteristics of the genre and the text. The cultural category"literature"is defined above all by the value thatis assigned to the textsthatconstitute it,and thisvalue is none other than the cultural transcendence that is attributedto them througha complex web of readings and evaluations.2
1 Juri Lotman, "Problems in the Typology of Texts," SovietSemiotics, ed., Daniel Lucid, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 119-124. 2 It should be emphasized thatreclassification impliesa valuejudgment, as well as a process of selectionbased on the formalcharacteristics of the genre and the text.
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Lotman reminds us that the possibilityof being transformed into "literature" existsforall texts,and argues thatitsclassification as "artistic" or "not-artistic" is an operation whichtakesplace in the mind of the reader.3 It is not necessary,however,that its author have conceived it as such. In other words, the factthatthe author of the text had the intentionof producing a literarytext,or vice versa, does not guarantee its classification as such by its readers. According to thisview,there are no a priori literary texts-literariness is determinedby a text'sculturalrole withina specificsociety at least as much as by its formal characteristics. Moreover, this means that throughoutits textuallife a textmay undergo a (theoreticallyunlimited) number of re-classifications. We have already discussed the case of science fiction.Let us now turn to another example of much greaterlongevity-the biblicaltexts.At the time theywere produced, manyof thembelonged to the historiography of the Hebrew peoples (keeping in mind that history was considered a revelatorygenre). Christianity saw in them, more than a historical significance, the source of a supernatural truth,and thereforesubordinated their literal meaning to allegorical interpretation.Today the biblical textsare often studied as literature; that is, they are valued more for their aesthetic meritsthan for theirhistoriographical significance or theirpossible transcendental value as sources of divine truth. As Eagleton has wrily put it, "Some textsare born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrustupon them."4 The concept of literaturehas changed fromthe colonial period to the present. The idea of historyhas also changed radically;to put it more precisely,the historiographical concept of truthhas undergone a transformation.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriestruthwas understood as thatwhichwas guaranteed by an authority.Historicalfactswere not transformed into "truth"until
Concerning the question of value and the concept of literariness see, Juri Lotman and A. M. Pjatigorskij, "Text and Function,"SovietSemiotics, 125-135; Jan Mukarovsky,Aesthetic Function, Norm, and Value as Social Facts,trans.Mark E. Suino, (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1970); JurijTynjanov, "On LiteraryEvolution,"trans.,Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska,Readings in RussianPoetics, (Cambridge: MIT UniversityPress, 1971); and Barbara Hernstein Smith,"Contingenciesof Value," Critical Inquiry, 10 (Sept., 1983): 1-35. 3 The idea was originally A. M. Pjatigorskij's, reformulated by Lotman in "Problems in the Typology of Texts," p. 119. 4 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory. An Introduction, (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 8.
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or by the personal theywere consecratedby the power of tradition prestigeof the author. Hence, thereis a discursivedisplacementin these texts from the representationof events themselvesto the of the historicaloccurimaginativeelaboration and interpretation is always placed at action historical of rence. The representation "Truth." of a suprahistorical the interpretation the serviceof It would be unthinkablefor a modern historianto inventdialogues between the protagonists of the history for the simple reason thatit would be impossibleto reproduce the exact words as theywere actuallyspoken in the past. Consequently,their repretruthas it is of historical a transgression sentationwould constitute understood today. However, the creation of dialogues was a favorite recourse of Renaissance historians,who feltthat it was an of the intentionsof the indispensable tool in the interpretation of theirdeeds. Our idea of protagonistsas well as the significance inheritedfromeighteenthcenturyrationalismand, espehistory, is based on a concept of truth cially,nineteenthcenturypositivism, during the larger In contrast, that is limitedto what is verifiable.5 part of the colonial period historicaltruthwas defined according of the factsand to the ideology that subsumed the interpretation fromthe Christian that,in the final analysis,derived its authority A good example of this historiographical and classical traditions.6 attitude is the Christian providentialismthat so influenced the narrationof the discoveryand conquest of America,whose sources are found in the Bible (the four monarquies of Daniel and the Apocalypse) and in Augustine's CivitasDei. According to thisview of the historical process, deeds from the past have a double meaning: one which is natural (empiricaland literal)and another which is supernatural (metaphysicaland allegorical). The same ideology underlies the Spanish Crown's American enterprise throughoutthe colonial period. The theological imperialismoutlined by the Catholic Monarchs and defined by Charles V, which forthe conquest, justification postulatesa theological-supernatural
5 By "positivism"I mean, "a theoryof knowledge that acknowledges no reality anythingbut the relationsbetween but factsand events,and refusesto investigate (Buenos Aires: Editodefilolosfia, factsand events."Jose FerraterMora, Diccionario rial Sudamericana, 1965), II, pp. 455-458. My translation. truththatwere prevalentthrough 6 For a discussion of the concepts of historical de de GonzaloJimenez much of the colonial period see Viktor Franki,El 'Antijovio' y verdaden la epocade la contrarreforma de realidad Quesada y las concepciones y el mlan(Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispdnica, 1963). ierismo,
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is manifestedin the narratives of the period as the divine guidance of each and everyhistoricaloccurrence. This transformation of the historiographical concept of truthfacilitatedthe assimilationof many of the historicalworksof the colonial period to the fieldof literature, a process whichbegan in the nineteenth centuryand has continued into the present.7As the concept of historicity changed many formsof narrativediscourse which did not conformto the new ideology were excluded from the field of historiography. This was simultaneously accompanied by a questioning of the authenticity and historicalauthority of the textswhich employed them,whichwere oftenstigmatized withthe labels of novelesque, utopian, imaginative, and so on. But whatwas considered vituperativeon the lips of a historian,turned into an encomium when expressed by a literary critic.Most of the narratives of the colonial period have undergone such a process of reclassification. A case in point is the Comentariosrealesof Garcilaso Inca de la Vega. Until the end of the last centuryit was generally accepted as the primarysource of Incan history. Today, however, what appeals to us in Garcilaso's textis not so much the wealth of information it offerson the history and cultureof the Incas, nor its rigorous compliance with sixteenth-century norms for the representationof truth,but ratherthe creativeaspects of its discourse.8 It goes withoutsayingthatthe textof the Comentariosrealeshas not changed physically.What is different, however, are the expectations of its readers. When Menendez y Pelayo asserted that the Comentario realeswas not a historyat all but a "utopian novel," in what proved to be a memorable passage, his intentionwas not to censure Garcilaso's masterpiece but to insure its place in the lithence erarycanon by proposing a new code for its interpretation, a new typologicalclassification.9
7 Enrique Pupo-Walker's La vocaci6nliteraria del pensamiento en America. hist6rico Desarrollo de la prosaficci6n: SiglosXVI, XVII, XVIII, yXIX. (Madrid: Gredos, 1982), is the most complete and judicious among recentstudies along these lines. 8 On Garcilaso's compliance withsixteenth-century norms for the representation of truthsee Margarita Zamora, "Language and Authority in the Comentarios reales," ModernLanguage Quarterly, 43, 3 (1982): 228-241. The followingare among the most recent and suggestivestudies on the creativeaspects of Garcilaso's discourse: Enrique Pupo-Walker,Historia, creaci6n y profecia en los textos del Inca Garcilasode la Vega, (Madrid: Jose Porrila Turanzas, 1982); Hugo Rodriguez Vecchini,"Don Quijote y La Florida del Inca," RevistaIberoamericana, 48 (1982): 587-620; and Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria,"Imperio y estilo en el Inca Garcilaso,"Discurso Literario, 3, 1 (1985): 75-80. 9 Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo, Origenes de la novela,I, (Madrid, 1905), p. 392.
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thata textmay belong to at least two typoltherefore, It follows, ogies, the one its creator had in mind and the one a given readerThis fact has and classification. ship utilizes for its interpretation considerable bearing on textual research, because although the physicalpropertiesof the text may remain unchanged, it will not categosignifythe same thing when interpretedwithindifferent code new of a hermeneutical the use implies reclassification ries. A aspects of a textssemantic different that interpretsas significant characteristics.'0 and syntactic A change in the social functionof a textis not a coincidentalor arbitrary occurrence. It invariably responds to specific social needs, and the resultingreorderingis marked by the predominant cultural ideologies of the community in question. In Spanish corresponds to very speAmerica, this process of reclassification cific historicalcircumstances.The resurgence of interestin the and with works of the colonial period coincides withromanticism the push toward politicalemancipationfromSpain. These circumstances were decisive in the initial phase of the restaurationand for of manycolonial texts,but even more significant interpretation thisdiscussion is the factthattheycontinue to influenceour views today. It was preciselyduring the romanticperiod thatthe studies in medieval textswas initiated to uncover national characteristics in Europe with the purpose of establishingan authocthonous literary evolution for each of the European nation states. Gonzalez Echevarria has noted that in the nascent Spanish American cultural consciousness of the nineteenthcenturythe colonial period aevumwhere the New World into a sortof medium was transformed 11There was a traits. literary own its exhibit was thoughtto begin to "La araucana" in Ercilla's like texts effort to transform concerted Chile and, in Cuba, Silvestrede Balboa's "Espejo de paciencia," into workswhose primaryfunctionwithinthe new culturalframework was to mark the beginnings and foundations of a national just as the "Poema de mio Cid," the "Chanson de Roliterature, land," and the "Nibelungelied" marked the origins of Spanish, Not coincidentally, respectively.'2 French, and German literatures
Lotman, "Problems in the Typology of Texts," p. 121. 11Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria,"JoseArrom,autor de la 'Relaci6n acerca de las (Caracas: Monte Avila, Relecturas, antigUedades de los indios' (picaresca e historia)," 1976), pp. 17-35. 12 One of the first studies by a Spanish American writerto be published on "La in El araucano, (Sanaraucana" was writtenby Andres Bello. It appeared initially
10 See
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and autonomy of Spanish the firstdeclaration of the singularity the "Alocucion a la poesia" (1823), came American belleslettres, Andres Bello. fromthe pen of an admirer of medieval literature, historian,pocritic, literary The work of Juan Maria Gutierrez, Mayo in Arde Asociacion of the litical activist,and co-founder by overshadowed unfortunately has been whose memory gentina, that of his famous compatriotsEcheverria and Sarmiento,offers perhaps the broadest and most complete picture of the literary thoughtof the period. We are indebted to Gutierrezfor the first the first poetica, America anthologyof Spanish American literature, volume of which was published in 1846. He was also one of the firstliteraryand cultural scholars to demonstratea sustained interestin the colonial period. As editor of Pedro de Ofia's Arauco domado,he restored a classic work that had been virtuallyforgotten in its native Chile. He also authored a series of studies of on Juan del Valle Cacolonial writerslike the firstinvestigations viedes, a monograph on Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo, and a seminal studyon Sor Juan Ines de la Cruz in which he demonstratedthat the "tenth muse" was an American-born writer rather than a Spaniard as had been claimed.'3 Among the many contributions his of Spanish American literature, Gutierrez made to the history of the literarymeritsof many colonial texts and his affirmation insistenceon the fecundatingrole thatan authocthonoustradition aesthetics could play in the development of an American literary deserve special mention. This firstretrospectivelook at the colonial legacy in the nineteenthcenturywas part of a vast enterpriseof culturalself-definition withinwhich the category"colonial literature"began to take shape. The antecedents and circumstanceswhich led to this key moment in the development of contemporarySpanish American culture had a decisive influence on the way these works are the studyof colonial studied and interpreted.Until veryrecently,
tiago de Chile), February 5, 1841, no. 545. The "Espejo de paciencia" was first introduced to a modern readership by Jose Antonio Echeverria who published of the poem, along witha descriptionof the text,in El plantel(La some fragments Habana), November, 1838. On Echeverria'swork and the revivaland canonization of the poem see Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, "Reflections on 'Espejo de paforthcoming) ciencia.' " (Cuban studies, Ticknor, historian, 13 In thisessay Gutierrezcorrectsthe Northamericanliterary espaiola thatSor Juana had been born in who claimed in his Historiade la literatura ed., Gregorio Weincoloniales americanos, Escritores Spain. See Juan Maria Gutierrez, berg, (Buenos Aires: Raigal, 1957), pp. 295-346.
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texts was characterized by the search for elements deemed precursors of a subsequent literaryproduction. Colonial texts as a group were designated a "founding literature," or, as Alfonso whose nascent Reyes preferredto call it,a "home-made" literature theater. genres were the chronicleand the missionary The intentionunderlyingall of these claims was, of course, to uncover evidence of an "American essence" in colonial textsthat our culturalproducts fromEuropean could serve to differentiate and, especially,Spanish ones. Columbus' diary or log of the first cited to confirmthe voyage of discoveryis the textmostfrequently and its feenvironment natural prodigious quality of America's literary a American of Spanish cundating role in the development of reclasa series suffered has itself text Columbus' But landscape. rhetorically a life as textual its it began us recall that Let sifications. by a man who did not have a nativecomhumble ship's log written mand of the language he was obliged to writein as officialreprethe Cosignificance sentativeof the Spanish Crown. The historical lumbian enterprise eventually acquired elevated the text to the of privileged position of firstdescriptionand original testimony the discoveryof America. The readings of the log performedby Fernando Colon and Las Casas in the sixteenth century transsource of unparalformedit into a legal document and a historical circumstances thatgave rise But the socio-political leled authority. to the independence movementwere also decisive in the eventual work. Implicitin the of the "Diario" into a literary transformation was American literature concept of an autonomous and essentially the problem of itsorigins.Columbus' "Diario," or ratherthe selection of the lost original edited by Las Casas, withits emphasis on the descriptiveand testimonialpassages, was deemed the most attractivealternativefor coping with the foundational problem imtradition.i4 plicitin the concept of a creole literary coordinates for authocthonous The insistence on establishing in effect has relegated coliterature American the field of Spanish lonial textsto the categoryof "precursors"withrespectto the succeeding literaryproduction. This implies,at the veryleast, a contingentimportance for these textswithinthat tradition.But even
14 The term "creole" stands here as a rough equivalent of the Spanish criollo. Spanish criollo designates thatwhich is essentially According to Arrom's definition, American. See Jose Juan Arrom, "Criollo: definiciony matices de un concepto," (Madrid: Gredos, 197 1), pp. 11-26. de America, Certidumbre
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more serious is that colonial texts have been approached from a critical perspective that frequently has as its primary object modern texts. The attemptto work chronologically backwards to define the supposed colonial precursorsof modern literary genres and modes of discourse has resulted in critical judgments that are often deforming.In order to begin to overcome some of the limitations of the critical perspective bequeathed to us by the nineteenth-centuryideologies of independence and nationalism, I would like to propose a bipartitecriticalstrategy. Such a strategy would consistof, in the first place, an approach to the textsof the colonial period that would striveto situate them accuratelywithin the socio-culturalcontext in which theywere produced to determine their original cultural functionand the discursivetype and classification to which theybelonged. The second step would be to studythem in the contextwhich determinedtheirclassification as "colonial literature,"to reveal the cultural processes that during the last two centuries has transformedthem into the founding textsof the Spanish American literary tradition. The firststep-the studyof these textsin the contextin which theywere produced froma historico-formalist perspective-needs littleclarification.The rigorous analysis of the formal characteristicsof a textwithinitshistorical period is an indispensablestep in determiningwhat a particular text signifiedto its original audience. But what meritcan there be in uncoveringthe mechanisms through which these textswere integratedinto the cultural category "colonial literature?"The advantages of viewingthe concept of "literariness," not as an a priori and absolute characteristic but as a mutable value assigned to a text as a resultof its social function have already been outlined. In order to understandhow thatvalue is constituted we mustreorientour focus fromthe textitselfto the criticalperformanceof the social institutions whichultimately evaluate and classifyit. This operation mightprove redundant in the case where the producer of the text and its receiver are utilizing identicalcodes and evaluativesystems. But when thereis a discrepancy between any aspect of the production and reception of the text,a metacritical approach offerssignificant advantages.'5
15 At the source of the ideological discrepanciesbetweenthe colonial and modern and literariness under discussionlies the question of chronoconcepts of historicity logical distance. However, other factors can contribute to such discrepancies. Among themare the questions of gender, race, and class thathave attracted considerable criticalattentionin recentyears.
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canonizaRonald Sousa has noted thatin the process of literary tion, "texts[are] marked as importantby the workingof a critical canon, singled out by it more because of itscontoursthan by their reorientaa significant nature as texts."'6He proposes, therefore, away fromthe textas the tion in the studyof canonization,shifting focal point to the criticaltraditionas the centralobject of investigation. The criticalstrategyproposed here incorporates Sousa's by arguing thatnot only is suggestion,but takes it one step further but a text'svalue an extratextualpropertyassigned to it a posteriori, and whichconstitute itstypology so are the concretecharacteristics assigned. The very"nature" the categoryto which it is ultimately of the text,as its readers are trained to perceive it, is extratextual and mutable. Consequently, our perception, our interpretation, and finally our assimilationof the textand the personal and social consequences of thatassimilationare tied to the processesof evaluin a vitalway. ation and classification On being reassigned to the literary field,the formalanalysisand the generic classificationof colonial texts has become extremely such as "novelproblematic. The use of descriptiveterminology and so forth(termswhich, esque," "protonovel,""creativehistory," moreover, have yet to be clearly defined typologically),underscores the ambiguous relation that exists between modern narraof the colotivegenres and much of colonial prose. The narratives nial period present a discursive varietywithout parallel in our the the philologicalcommentary, times.The ship's log, the relacion, chronicle, the history,the theological treatise,the platonic dialogue, were all discursive forms employed to narrate the New World experience. Moreover, many texts of the colonial period of discursivetypesto concharacteristically incorporatea plurality of Fray Serstitutea totallynew hybriddiscourse. The Memorias vando Teresa de Mier is a case in point. Here we find vestigesof the relacion,the philological commentary,the sermon, the picaresque novel, forensic oratory, autobiography, and so forth, melding in Fray Servando's text to become what is perhaps the most amusing independentistpropaganda in the historySpanish that arise from the formal American writing.But the difficulties analysis of these texts are not exclusively, or even primarily, on the part of the productsof a possible methodologicaldeficiency
16 Ronald Sousa, "Canonical Questions," Ideologies 16 (May-June, and Literature, 1983): p. 103.
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critic nor of an insufficiency of the methodology itself to adequately describe its formal characteristics. They result from the application of a formalist methodologyas if the formalcharacter of the textcould be determinedin an absolute sense, disregarding the contingentnature of all typologiesand formsof classification. Textual criticismmust take into account not only a text's formal characteristics and the cultural contextin which it was produced, but also the ideologies whichinformthe cultureof itsreceivers, for reading is always a mediated activity. It is clear then thata colonial narrativeis not likelyto be a "protonovel" and the like, but a chronicle, a relacion, a commentary, etc., or any one of the many variants and hybridsof the genres that were available to a writerof that period. The supposed novelesque (in the modern sense) characteristics thatmightbe found in these textscan only appear novelesque when viewed in retrospect. With increasing frequencySpanish American novelistsare incorporating colonial narrativetechniques, motifs,themes, and even directcitationsto representa complex Spanish American reality.'7 But those aspects only become novelesque elements upon being transformedby the new discursive context into which they have been inserted,that of the modern novel. Equally anachronisticand incongruous is the assertion that an incipientAmericanistor nationalistconsciousness (in the autonomistsense of these terms)can be found in these texts,particularly in those dating any earlier than the mid-eighteenth century,in order to support their inclusion in the Spanish American literary tradition.During most of the colonial period an autonomistpolitical consciousness simplydid not exist,nor was there a concept of literarinessthat would permitthe production and classification of these textsas belonging to an essentially American literature.It is preciselywhen such an independentistsentimentbegins to manifestitselfthat one can say that the ideological frontier that separates colonial Spanish America from its modern counterparthas been crossed. It is incumbent upon us as critics,therefore,to take fullyinto account the mediative role played by the institutions and ideolo17 See, for example, El mundoalucinante, Reinaldo Arenas' surrealistinterpretation of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier's Memorias, Alejo Carpentier'sEl arpa y la a novel based on Columbus' texts,and El mar de las lentejas, sombra, by Antonio Benitez Rojo, who confesses to having borrowed heavilyfrom Cuban historiesof the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturiesfor materialfor his novel.
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gies imposed on these texts by their contemporary culture, in order to determine, firstof all, what each text "thinksit is." In other words, how it unfolds with respect to the available models. Yet just as importantwould be to recognize the mediative role played by institutions and ideologies whose roots can be found in the nineteenth-century thrustforindependence when, forthe first time, these textsbegan to be restored and incorporated into the nascent culture of an independent Spanish America. What I am proposing here is thatwe recognize thatwe consider these textsas "Spanish American literatureof the colonial period" simplybecause we have defined them as such, and that we must take into account the consequences of that extraformalcultural process in our criticalpractice.That we have transformed these textsin our eagerness to adapt them to the socio-political and culturalneeds of the momentmustbe a centralissue in any exegesis and interpretation. The bipartite critical strategyproposed here could prove useful in the identification and resolution of some of the fundamental inconsistenciesand contradictionsof the criticalperspective from which these works have usually been studied, many of which have resulted fromthe projectionof modern concepts and taxonomies toward a past in whichtheycan have no meaning. Our criticalinquiries should address not only the question of what a particularcolonial textsignifiedto itscontemporaries, but also the reasons whyit has a new and different significance for us today.
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