Chapter 3 - 1837: The Foundation of a National Literature

Summary

In what is now known as Argentina, the year 1837 marked the birth of a modern, historically grounded understanding of literature and culture. It also marked the emergence of a generation (later known as the Generation of 1837) with far-reaching influence on the life of the country – including its first constitution, the public education system, and the drive to write national literary histories. Since then the preoccupation with what makes Argentina and its literature unique, and its present unlike its past, has not ceased to be a central trait of national culture. This chapter argues for the relevance of interpreting 1837 writers – in particular, Esteban Echeverría, Domingo F. Sarmiento, and Juan B. Alberdi – as our contemporaries, in the sense that we are still enmeshed in the modern project that, we think, they inaugurated. This is the case despite, or precisely because of the fact that their Eurocentric and exclusionary views have been increasingly evident in the public sphere. Showing that they were the first Argentine intellectuals for whom texts were understood and mainly valorized because of their location, author, and moment of production, this chapter offers clues into their foundational status.