<i>Terra Nostra</i> and the Rewriting of the Modern Subject: Archetypes, Myth, and Selfhood
2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 46; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/lar.2011.0044
ISSN1542-4278
Autores Tópico(s)Early Modern Spanish Literature
ResumoThis article argues that one of the most important contributions of Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra is its rewriting of the modern subject. Through its metafi ctional dimension, the novel seeks to change the legacy of the recoding of subjectivities begun in the Spanish Golden Age. More specifi cally, it is through the construction of its characters and the way in which the latter depend on, and grow out of, the structure of the novel that Fuentes revises modern individualist conceptions of the subject. Although critics have tended to privilege the novel's realm of myth (understood as transcendent and timeless), this reading depends on the novel's evocation of a Marxist narrative of culture as strug- gle driven that Carlos Fuentes never loses from sight. The novel's structure arguably promotes a diachronic understanding of history into which both the mythic and material strands feed. Myth, in this reading, is a consciously embraced worldview that grounds, and dialectically informs, this vision of history rather than shying away from it. An overall critical consensus has evolved around Terra Nostra with regard to its mythic dimension: myth, cyclical time, and timeless moments are viewed as dominating the novel's historical framing, expressed through the well-known key dates of 1492 (the discovery of America, the conquest of Granada, the pub- lication of Antonio de Nebrija's Gramatica de la lengua castellana and the edict of expulsion of the Jews), 1521 (the fall of Tenochtitlan and the comuneros rebellion), and 1598 (the death of Felipe II). 1
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