Preface

The present study offers readings of Colombian novels published from 1844 to 1987. It represents the development, over a period of several years, of certain theoretical and empirical assumptions and is based on three fundamental premises. The first of these premises concerns the extraordinary regionalism that has existed historically in the territory we call Colombia. In chapter 1, I discuss briefly how Colombia in fact developed into the four semi-autonomous regions that comprised it for slightly more than a century (the 1830s to the l950s). The second premise is that many if not most, Colombian novels have functioned as objects of an ideological dialogue, an issue that is addressed in chapter 2 and referred to throughout the study writing has always occupied an absolutely central role in Colombia and has been intimately associated with politics. Publishing books has been a political act, often subversive in nature. The third premise is that Colombian culture and the respective regional cultures of these four semi-autonomous regions of the past have been affected in varying degrees by what Walter Ong, in his study Ora1ity and Literacy (1982), has identified as the noetics of orality and writing. More specifically, I analyze how oral noetics have been present in the Colombian novel and affected it over the past century and a half. In chapters 3 through 6 I discuss specific Colombian novels using Ong's study and his related work as one of the most important theoretical bases, even though Ora1ity and Literacy in itself is not a theory of the novel (nor, in fact, "theory" of anything). Generally speaking, I am concerned with what Ong calls the technology of writing. Whereas the subject of Ong's work is the differences between orality and literacy, I analyze how these two different modes of expression have affected literary works. Even though I find Ong's conceptual framework useful in discussing the orality of regional traditions, my adherence to some of his work should not be construed as an endorsement of all the propositions presented in Ora1ity and Literacy.

This project has other theoretical bases beyond those suggested in the three premises set forth above. In a study that considers more than one hundred novels, I use as a constant point of departure certain principles and concepts of narratology developed by Gerard Genette and Shlomith mmmon-Kenan. Whatever the relationship these novels might have with ideological context and orality, they have in common the fact that they are all narratives. Consequently, narratological issues are essential for this study In the case of all novels, but particularly those analyzed in detail in chapters 3 through 6,fundamental narratological questions posed consistently are, How do these texts function as nontive? and, How do they create an experience for the reader? In addition, readers acquainted with the work of Terry Eagleton will note his direct and indirect influence. An underlying supposition present throughout the book is that the Colombian novel in one way or another expresses certain relation-ships to oral culture and/or writing culture. The latter is explored in the standard relationship one novel may have to another; this relationship, of course, is fundamentally a study of intertextuality. (Intertextuality as a theoretical issue is approached most directly in chapter 6.)

I intend to offer both a broad overview of novelistic production in Colombia from 1844 to 1987 and readings of selected individual texts. Part One, "Colombia in Its Novel," consists of two chapters that introduce Colombia and its novel within a broad historical and ideological context. Chapter 1 presents a brief history of Colombia and its regions. The division of Colombia's nineteenth- and twentieth-century political history into six periods provides the historical background and ideological context for the discussion of novels in chapter 2. The emphasis is not on the "classic" texts of traditional Colombian literary history but rather on a broad range of novels seen as the product of historical contingencies. Following the lead of Jane Tompkins, I see classic texts not as the ineffable Products of genius but as bearers of a set of regional, nationa1, social, economic, institutional, and professional interests.

In Part Two, "The Novel in Its Region," the study moves into the novels of the four regions in four consecutive chapters.' Chapter 3 deals with the Interior Highland Tradition centered in Bogot (called in Spanish the a1ndano cundi-boyacense), which includes Tolima, Huila, and Santander. Alter a brief introduction to this Interior highland Tradition (often referred to in the text simply as Highland tradition), the main focus of chapter 3 is the analysis of the novels Manue1a (1858) by Eugenio Diaz, Diana Gazadora (1915 ) by Climaco Soto Borda, La vordgine (1924) by Iose Eustasio Rivera, and El buensa1vaie (1966) by Eduardo Caballero Calder6n. The novelistic tradition of the Costa is the focus of chapter 4, which includes analyses of Ingermina (1844) by Juan Jose Nieto, Cosme (1927) by Jose Felix Fuenmayor, La casa grande (I962) by Alvaro Cepeda Samudio, Respirando e1 verano (I962) by Hector Rojas Herazo, and Cien anos deso1edad (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Chapter 5, defining the Antioquian Tradition, deals with Frutos de mi tierra l1896) by TomAs Carrasquilla, Tod (1933) by Cesar Uribe Piedrahita, Risara1da (1935) by Bernardo Arias Trujillo, and El dia seha1ado (1964) by Manuel Mejia Vallejo. In chapter 6, on the novelistic tradition of the Greater Cauca (Gran Cauca), I analyze MaIia (1867) by Iorge Isaacs, El deezrea1 (1886) by Eustaqulo Palacios, Las Bstre11as son negras (1949) by AInoldo Palacios, and El bazar de los idiotas (1974) by Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal.

I submit a double response to the inevitable question of the criteria for selecting these particular seventeen novels. On the one hand, I believe most of them represent a general consensus among readers and critics of the Colombian novel as "major" works. On the other hand, in those regions or periods where there has been a paucity of criticism I have chosen works I consider "representative" of the region and the period. This is the case for relatively ignored novels such as Las estrllas son negras by the Afro-Colombian writer Ar-noldo Palacios. The broad vision of the Colombian novel I have produced, combining chapter 2 with the remaining chapters, recognizes jane Tompkins's proposition (with respect to the American novel) that "major" novelists did not develop in response to a sudden perception of the greatness of a few literary geniuses; they emerged from a series of interconnected ideological circumstances that moved the publication criticism, and, finally, institutionalization of the novel (Colombian, in this instance) in a certain direction. 7

Part Three, "Alter Regionalism," contains two chapters that discuss the contemporary Colombian novel and propose conclusions. While one of the premises of this project is that Colombia consisted of four send-autonomous regions for over a century, it is equally important to emphasize that radical modernization and changes in communication have resulted in a nation as unified as most over the past three decades. Consequently chapter 7 treats the postregionalist novel published from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. (For certain practical reasons that will become evident in the reading of the first six chapters, the exact years covered are 1965 to 1987. I have arbitrarily chosen 1987 as the cutoff date for this study) with modernization, primary oral cultures have also vanished. Consequently, in this chapter I attempt to establish the main trends of the Colombian novel over the past two decades under the general categories of the "modern" and "postmodern" novel. Chapter 8 consists of brief conclusions.

In almost all cases I have eschewed providing plot synopses of the novels discussed or mentioned. In many of the analyses I have used G6rard Genette's proposed formulation of a nuclear verb or essential sentence which Synthesizes a novel's action. For example, Genette essentializes the action of The Odyssey as "Ulysses returns to Ithaca" and of A la recherche du temps perdu as "Marcel becomes a writer." These synthetic formulations will provide some idea of plot. Readers in need of detailed plot information should consult Antonio Curcio Altamar'S history of the Colombian novel, Donald McGrady's overview of the Colombian historical novel, and Kessel Schwartz'S New History of Spanish-American Fiction.

I have attempted to avoid excessive specialized terminology. Nevertheless, a brief introduction to concepts and terminology of Ong and Genette may be useful. Ong makes important distinctions between "primary oral cultures" of persons with no knowledge of writing and “writing cultures" and demonstrates how the noetics of individuals from these two cultures are radically different. He points out that we (as readers) are so literate that it is difficult for us to conceive of an oral universe of communication or thought except as a variant of a literate universe. He demonstrates that writing is not just a kind of complement to oral speech but a transformer of verbalization. In chapter 3 of Orality and Literacy, titled "some Psychodynamics of Orality" Ong outlines in detail the characteristics of Primary oral cultures. Besides the mnemonic formula character of verbal expression, primary oral cultures include nine further basic characteristics. They are (1) additive rather than subordinative, (2) aggregative rather than analytic, (3) redundant or "copious," (4) conservative or traditionalist, (5) close to the human lifeworld, (6) agonistically toned, (7) empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced, (8) homeostatic, and (9) situational rather than abstract. Following Ong's procedure, I use the terms Primary ora1culture and simply ora1 culture interchangeably throughout this text. Colombia has only one region--the Costa--with both a strong oral culture in the twentieth century and a novel that assimilates it, Cien enos de so1edad. Consequently, important factors in this study will be issues such as the distinction between merely oral effects (conversational elements in literary style, approximations of informal speech patterns, the use of colloquial language in dialogue or the narration) and oral residue (habits of thought and expression tracing back to preliterate situations or practice or deriving from the dominance of the oral as a medium in a given culture). As I will demonstrate, factors of orality are significant even in the novel of the Highland area, the strongest writing culture of the four regions and the least affected by orality.

I use terminology from Gerard Genette with some regularity, particularly to identify with precision the nature of narrators. For example, describing a narrator as extradiegetic - heterodiegetic un-equivocally identifies a narrator with a precision impossible if one were limited to concepts such as third-person omniscient, a patently ambiguous description of a narrator.

By ideology I mean the ways in which what we say and believe connect with the power structure and power relations of the society in which we live, and I refer the reader to Terry Eagletoni Theory of Literature, which has informed my understanding of ideology' Accepting Eagleton's proposition on literature and ideology in general, I will argue in chapter 2 that literature is ideology in Colombia, particularly at the crucial turn-of-the-century juncture when the practices of literature and politics were so inextricably bound.

Some clarification may be in order concerning place-names. The Republic of Colombia has undergone several name changes over the centuries. Duhag the Colonial period it was known as the Nuevo Reino de Grmada, and in the republican period it was called Colombia (including Venezuela and Ecuador, 1819--1830), Nueva Gra-nada (1832--1857), the Confederacion Granadina (I857--1863), Estados Unidos de Colombia (1863 -- 1886), and Republica de Colombia (l886--present). For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to this territory as the Nuevo Reino de Granada during the Colonial period and Colombia after 1810. The division of the country into departments has also evolved over the decades. I have chosen to identify regions in a fashion quite similar (but not exactly so) to the traditional regional divisions of the nineteenth century (see chapter 1). The alndano cundi-boyacense and surrounding departments are identified in English as the Interior Highland Region. I have chosen to use the Spanish Costa for the Caribbean Coastal Region, since Coastal Region in English could give the false impression that it included only the coastal area itself, when in fact the departments of the Costa are numerous and cover much territory inland from Barran-quilla and Cartagena. For example, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is considered a costeho in Colombia, but his native Alacataca is inland. Greater Antioquia refers not only to the present-day state of An-tioquia but also to the nineteenth-century unit, which included present-day Caldas, Risaralda and Quindio. Greater Cauca (referred to in Spanish as El Gran Cauca) includes several departments in the area. It is important to understand that these four regions, whether the English denominations I have chosen to use for them are ideal or not, represent cultural units that have historical ties in various facets of life, from political and economic to cultural and literary again, see chapter 1 for further explanation).

Regional context is a fundamental factor in my reading of the seventeen novels analyzed in chapters 3 through 6. It should be noted from the outset, nevertheless, that three Colombian novels--Maria, La voragine, and Cien anos de so1edad--are "national" works in the sense that they have successfully reached the nation's readers and writers beyond a primarily regional context. Consequently, a novel such as La vordgine (indeed, Colombia's fust "best seller") resulted in the publication of similar books in regions other than the interior highland. For this reason, I include the three novels in the chronologies of each region which appear in the appendix.

Of the extant critical studies on the Colombian novel, Antonio Curcio Altamar'S Evolucion de la novala en Colombia (1957) and Seymour Menton's La novela co1ombiana: P1anetas y satelites (1978) are the most significant predecessors of the present project. Curcio Altamar offers brief commentary frequently of an impressionistic nature, on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century novel, mentioning over five hundred Colombian novels. Mention sets forth close readings of ten novels from Eugenio Diaz's Manuela (1858) to Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazabal's El titiritero (1977). Another seminal volumeis Ernesto Porras Collantes's Bibliografia de la nove1a en Co1ombia(l976). I refer to these valuable books frequently, and without them the present study would have been virtually impossible. Other recent books, not as all-encompassing as these three, are Fernando Ayala Poveda's Nove1istas colombianos contemporaneos (1983), Marvin Lewis's Treading the Ebony Path: Ideology and Violence in Conremporary Afro-Co1oxnbian Prose Fiction (1987), Roman Lopez Tames's La narrativa actual de Co1ombia y su contexto socia1 (1975), and Bogdan Piotrowski's La realidad nacional colombiana y su narrativa conremporanea (1988).

The titles of the novels under discussion appear in the original Spanish. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations of passages from novels are mine. In special cases, such as passages with subtle word play in the original Spanish text (such as that found in Moreno-Dur4n), I include both the original Spanish and my translation.

Several of these readings have been published in altered forms, usually with a slightly different emphasis: "The Problem of Unity in Fiction: Narrator and Self in Maria," MLN 101, no. 2 (March 1986): 342--353; "La flgura del autor y del escritor en La voragine," Discurso 1iterario 4, no. 2 (1987): 535 -- 551; "Structure and Transformation of Reality in Alvarez Gardeazabal: El bazar de los idiotas," Kentucky Romance Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1980): 245 --261.

This project was supported by grants from the Fulbright Commission of Colombia, the Joint Center for Latin-American Studies of the University of Chicago--University of Illinois-Urbana, the Graduate School of Washington University in St. Louis, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Anairs of the University of Colorado at Boulder. In Colombia the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Instituto Caro y Cuervo, Banco de la Repwhlica, Biblioteca Piloto de Medellin, Centro de Historia de Buga, Biblioteca del Atlantico, FAES in Medellin, and Biblioteca Nacional, and their respective directors, pro-vided kind and impressively efficient support. Numerous individuals in Colombia also extended enormous good will: I particularly thank Belisario Betancur, Ignacio Chaves, Dario Iaramillo Agudelo, Otto Morales Beultez, and German Vargas. I have had the privilege of interviewing most living Colombian novelists over the past fifteen years, and I thank them as a group, from the young Hector Sanchez, who encouraged my first efforts as a dissertation writer in his faithful correspondence from Barcelona in the mid-1970s, to the present-day celebrity Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who has patiently fielded my questions on more than one occasion in recent years.

My special thanks go to the numerous colleagues and students--they know who they are--who have contributed to my understanding of the Colombian novel and the preparation of the manuscript. I appreciated the conscientious work of Jana DeJong, research assistant. I am particularly indebted to the graduate students in my Colombian novel seminars offered in 1983 and 1986 at Washington University in St. Louis and to the eighteen graduate students in a similar seminar offered in 1988 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.