Foundations. Beatriz Sarlo in the 19th Century

Abstract

This essay systematizes Beatriz Sarlo’s nineteenth-century Argentinean literature approaches, which are part of a broader critical project focused on the twentieth century, particularly on the rst decades, that she has extended at least to the present century. The central hypothesis is that Sarlo’s insistence on examining the founding moment of Argentinean literature and the work and figure of writers such as Sarmiento and Echeverría is due to her intention to find a first modernizing moment before the cultural modernity she observes in her classic work Una modernidadperiférica. Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (1988). Furthermore, the essay aims to explore Sarlo’s initial study about Juan María Gutiérrez in relation to a literary history narrated from a modern perspective but also concerning her position as a critic.