8 Introduction
which, far from being definite and unchanging, convey opinions and per-
spectives conditioned by, and indicative of, social, cultural, political, and
economic circumstances. Of most interest to us here is the relationship
between art and ideas and, specifically, that of literary culture and political
ideology.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Chilean literature underwent
significant shifts in style, content, and function, as new market and cultural
conditions gradually created an expanded readership. This era saw the spe-
cialization of the intellectual enterprise throughout Latin America, as fic-
tion writers, poets, or literary critics came to earn professional livelihoods.
As Argentine literary scholars Beatriz Sarlo and Carlos Altamirano explain,
there appeared an ‘‘interaction between the writers and the market starting
with the moment in which the production and distribution of the book was
converted into a branch of the general production of goods.’’
∞≥
Rama, more-
over, notes that this ‘‘period of modernization brought a stronger emphasis
on specialization, a more rigid division of intellectual labor . . . appropriate
for societies that now confronted demands for various kinds of complex
knowledge.’’
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The prevalence of relatively affordable paper-bound books,
higher literacy rates, and greater demand spurred by a literature-hungry
urban population signified that literary culture was moving further away
from its earlier, exclusive purpose as a diversion of and for the elite. Novels,
poetry, short stories, and newspaper serials were increasingly being written
and read by intellectuals, civil servants, accountants, journalists, teachers,
politicians, and businesspeople of a middle class eager to define and fortify
its own cultural presence in society. The most widely read and praised fiction
trend of early-twentieth-century Chile was criollismo (‘‘creolism’’), a predomi-
nantly middle-class genre that combined stylistic and thematic sensibilities
inspired by European naturalist writers allied to the liberal cause, especially
the celebrated Frenchman Émile Zola, with native—or criollo—settings.
Criollismo emerged at the turn of the century as a cultural creation with
ideological overtones. Contributors to the genre, including members and
fellow travelers of the PR, revealed a nationalist, reformist, and populistic
disposition in works that placed lower-class Chileans in the cultural and
national limelight and pushed the aristocracy out of it. In a manner similar
to that of important English, Irish, and Argentine intellectuals of the 1920s
and 1930s, Guillermo Labarca Hubertson, Mariano Latorre, Luis Durand,
and other criollistas saw nationness in the countryside, among campesinos
(country folk) whom the urban elite essentially thought of as bumpkins.
∞∑
The genre’s contributors believed that chilenidad (‘‘Chileanness’’ or ‘‘Chil-