In Naciones intelectuales, Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado explores the processes and works that laid the foundations of a new literary modernity in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Focusing on a period that goes from the signing of the Constitution in 1917 to the death of Alfonso Reyes in 1959, Sánchez Prado centers his analysis on the way in which four elements of Mexican cultural practice—the notion of literature, the figure of the intellectual, the creation of academic institutions and the definition of national identity—emerged through the various debates held by leading figures of the period.  Through an appropriation of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “literary field,” the book analyzes different key moments, controversies, and cultural interventions, which ultimately led the diverse aesthetic spectrum created by the Revolution into becoming a highly institutional system of literature. Sánchez Prado’s work deals with a wide range of writers, including Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Cuesta, Manuel Maples Arce, Ramón López Velarde, Francisco Monterde, José Gaos, the Hiperión philosophers, and Octavio Paz. As a result, this books offers a cartography of Mexican literary institutions unprecedented in scope, which will allow readers, students, and scholars to understand the construction of modern Mexican literature in a clear, rigorous, and systematic way.

“In Naciones intelectuales, Sánchez Prado provides a significant revision of key moments in twentieth-century Mexican literary and intellectual history, from the avant-garde onward, partly through the careful reconstruction and analysis of the evolving institutional context. ... The brilliant study is, among other things, a forceful attempt to dislodge some of the most persistent conceptual paradigms, myths, and stereotypes that continue to loom large in popular and scholarly visions of Mexican identity and intellectual history.” —Sebastiaan Faber, Oberlin College

Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Washington University, is the author of El canon y sus formas: La reinvención de Harold Bloom y sus lecturas hispanoamericanas (2002). He has edited various collections of scholarly articles, the most recent of which is El arte de la ironía: Carlos Monsiváis ante la crítica (2007; co-edited with Mabel Moraña). He has published extensively on Mexican literature and culture, and on questions of the relationship between canon construction, world literature, and Latin American writing, in journals such as Casa de las Américas, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, and Comparative Literature.

978-1-55753-538-2 In Spanish.
2009.Vol. 47. c. 320 pp. Paper $43.95

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