The Ill City: Literature and Marginality in Medardo Ángel Silva’s chronicles

Literature and discourses about crime have always coexisted. They have fed each other during their historical development, reaching, perhaps, the climax of these relationships in the conceptualization of “beautiful crimes” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the introduction to her book E...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Salas Klocker, Luis Alberto
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:México
Institución:UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL AUTÓNOMA DE MÉXICO
Repositorio:(an)ecdótica
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/145
Acceso en línea:https://revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/anEcdotica/index.php/anec/article/view/145
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Modernismo
criminología
decadentismo
crónica
Medardo Ángel Silva
Modernism
criminology
decadentism
chronicle
Descripción
Sumario:Literature and discourses about crime have always coexisted. They have fed each other during their historical development, reaching, perhaps, the climax of these relationships in the conceptualization of “beautiful crimes” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the introduction to her book El cuerpo del delito. Un manual, Josefina Ludmer proposes the use of crime as a “critical instrument” that allows the serialization of different texts. The crime, or what it is considered a crime at a given moment, is in itself an indicator of a state of society. Medardo Ángel Silva (1898-1919) is one of the greatest representatives of the late Ecuadorian modernism. His facet as a poet has been thoroughly studied, even by his contemporaries. On the contrary, his facet as a chronicler, as in general happened with other modernist writers, was recovered by critics not so many years ago. His chronicles are complex discursive plots that articulate a series of innovative turn-of-the-century discourses for Ecuadorian letters. Criminology, decadence and, in broad terms, discourses that associated literary practice with degeneration nurture the chronicler of Guayaquil, the ill city.