Manuel González Prada: An Undeservedly Excluded Modernista from Peru (original) (raw)

2016, South Atlantic Review

This paper argues one primary point: the Peruvian poet and essayist Manuel González Prada (1844–1918) deserves to be more firmly included in the moment, movement, school, or style of Latin American literature known as Modernismo. González Prada, like Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Ricardo Palma, César Vallejo, José Carlos Mariátegui, José María Arguedas, and Mario Vargas Llosa, ranks among the top of Peruvian literary figures, but mainly in Peru where his work is hotly debated by literati, social scientists, historians, politicians and journalists. Outside Peru, things are even more deleterious for students and scholars attempting to assess González Prada’s position in Peruvian and Latin American literature. In the United States, for example, he rates no more than the inclusion in anthologies of one or two of his Modernista poems, his most famous essay “Nuestros Indios” (“Our Indians”), or the appearance of an occasional critical article on his work.