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UBC Theses and Dissertations

El campo literario en Colombia : una lectura en clave de café Monje, Camilo

Abstract

This study is a re-reading of the Colombian literature through the following concepts: field, sociability, and public and private space. Instead of the traditional method used by literary criticism—division into schools, authors, and chronologies—this analysis uses the space known as the café to address the issue. Thanks to the sociable nature of the café, it is possible to re-read many of the most important writings from this tradition, which are related and relocated within an expansive and cohesive literary field. The social gatherings that brought Colombian writers together from the end of the colonial era are inserted in a process of continuities and interruptions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After reading this process under the lens of or by focusing on the café, it is possible to notice a new network of connections between different eras and different Colombian writers. Authors related with a political order can now be interconnected with novelists and poets; writers related to a school or a literary “ism” break down these borders through encounters that they have or that they recreate in their texts; traditional authors are re-read as being Avant-guard and Avant-guard authors are re-read as being traditional; canonical writers can be linked to schools or to writers who are considered as not being as important by literary criticism. In short, this reading removes Colombian literature from the label it has been given or the specialization attributed to it by literary criticism. Instead, it is presented on a diachronic stage made up of flows and transitions where literary works either resonate beyond their time or resonate despite it.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International