Towards a Characterization of the Critical and Bibliographical Discourse from the Americas in the 18th Century

• Main Author: Cathereen Coltters Illescas
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 2016-09-01
• Series: Literatura Mexicana
• Subjects: discurso crítico bibliográfico; bibliotecas; pensamiento crítico americano
• Online Access: https://revistas-filologicas.unam.mx/literatura-mexicana/index.php/lm/article/view/901

This study provides a characterization of the American Critical Bibliographic Discourse, a category that brings together a diverse group of works that, in the Eighteenth Century, tried to collect the quasi-totality of the cultural production of America in the time frame of the controversies about the cultural inferiority of the New World, works produced by literates positioned between the Baroque Tradition and Catholic Enlightenment. This speech is also proposed as the antecedent of the Latin American literary and historiographical critical thinking, and is an early reflection on the state of literature and culture in colonial times. It can be also said, that each bibliographic repertoire is evidence of the different stages of a bibliographic critical discourse in the process, as part of a larger cultural process of self-affirmation of the Creole segment.