Lucí­a Miranda: O el camino de la extrañeza a la absorción

Abstract

In this paper the ideological and programmatic assumptions underlying the novel Lucí­a Miranda by Eduarda Mansilla are analysed. A woman writer in a country where only the elites had access to writing and to high culture, Eduarda Mansilla presents in the first part of her novel a series of reading scenes through which she extols the virtues of popular education. In the second part of the book, on the other hand, once she has introduced the culture clash -of the literate culture represented by the Spanish and the oral culture represented by the timbúes-, she seeks to achieve a synthesis of opposites that would highlight the best in each. It is in this attempt that she reveals the ideological project that she advocates. The interplay of appropriations, projections and interweavings connecting Lucí­a Miranda with the romancero, the reading scenes, and the Cantar del Mí­o Cid make it possible to shed some light on a choice that does not avoid personal, family and class constraints within the context of Argentinian history and the horizon of expectations at that time