Abstract

This dissertation defines the Mexican poets of modernismo and Los contemporaneos as avant-garde movements. It studies how the avant-garde confronted politically, as well as aesthetically, proscriptive discourses in an effort to communicate themselves to others. It also shows how avant-garde movements in Mexico have struggled from within the confines of restricted economies to express something beyond them. Such a situation caused avant-garde poets to create ruptures within the restraints of the boundaries themselves. ;Since the word "avant-garde" is so important to the dissertation, some effort is made in the early pages to define exactly what "avant-garde" means. The study is taken back to Plato and moves on through the Renaissance to the nineteenth century and Henri Comte de Saint-Simon's use of the term in 1825. This portion of the study shows how the avant-garde's vision of something not readily understood by those who were not avant-garde is used in the creation of political utopias. It also shows how many artists rejected, and were rejected by, many of the overly proscriptive utopias. ;One of the most important of the political utopias to Mexico was that proposed by Positivism. Modernismo rejects Porfirio Diaz's brand of Positivism because it is overly restrictive of artistic production. In the years after the Revolution, Positivistic ideology continued to play an important role in the creation of a Mexican identity. The poets of the movement called Los contemporaneos, while participating in the education projects supported by the post-Revolutionary government, also attempted to create a space free from the restraints imposed on them by the prevailing political ideology. The contemporaneos felt that by creating such a space that they were performing the vital function of forming a Mexican literary canon. Whether or not this specific "avant-garde" role played by Mexican authors is adequately defined by current critics of the avant-garde such as Peter Burger, Matei Calinescu, and Renato Poggioli is critiqued throughout the dissertation