Jorge Isaacs’ María as a subversion of Romanticism in New Granada [MARÍA DE JORGE ISAACS COMO SUBVERSIÓN DEL ROMANTICISMO EN LA NUEVA GRANADA]

Abstract

The article analyses aspects of the slavery relations of production portrayed in Jorge Isaacs’ María (1867) as an expression of altered criticism towards the canon of Romanticism and as a form of cultural resistance to the hegemonic discourse of the political elites in the founding literature of the 19th century. The work carried out by black characters from the master’s point of view is traced through some keys derived from the Hegelian dialectic of the master and the slave, noting how their subjectivities are confronted and how, in the unfolding of the narrative voice, desire is restored to the slave. The acquisition of self-awareness on the part of the slave and the recovery of the ancestral memory of their African cultural roots through oral tradition imply the breaking of the historical cycle that legitimizes the power of the ruling class, while at the same time evidencing the crisis of slavery as a social and economic institution. It is concluded that the novel constitutes a particularly “subversive” attempt to signify the imaginary around slavery, as well as the notion of the “black African”, within the framework of an American literary tradition that refracts the social, political, and economic contradictions in the historical development of capitalism. © 2021 The authors.