Of Material and Methods. A Review of Ernesto Capello’s <em>City at the Center of the World: Space, History, and Modernity in Quito</em> (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011)

Authors

  • Christa J. Olson University of Wisconsin-Madison

Keywords:

Benjamín Carrión, literary criticism, moral shrinking, humus, Peruvian literature

Abstract

In 1942, the Ecuadorian critic Benjamín Carrión urged his compatriots to reject the “moral shrinking” that plagued their country after its recent massive loss of territory to Peru. Admitting that they could not restore that territory, he argued for a new national future, writing, “in our providential tropic, rich in humus but also rich in fevers and pests, it is possible to build a patria, a ‘small great patria’, with the human material we have.” For Carrión, the key to that new national greatness—a greatness of spirit, not size—lay in Ecuador’s particular national vocations for liberty and for the arts. His argument invoked great figures of Ecuadorian political history alongside a long artistic history extending from the pre-Colombian era. Continuing along a path paved with the work of freedom-loving politicians and artists, Carrión asserted, would take his people out of their current moment of loss and allow them to fulfill their destiny for national greatness.

Author Biography

Christa J. Olson, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Christa J. Olson es profesora asistente en retórica y composición en la Universidad de Wisconsin en Madison. Su investigación versa sobre la historia de la retórica y de la cultura visual en America Latina. Ha publicado artículos en Quarterly Journal of Speech and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, y, actualmente, completa un manuscrito sobre la cultura visual, el indigenismo y la identidad nacional en Ecuador.

Published

2012-05-15

How to Cite

Olson, C. J. (2012). Of Material and Methods. A Review of Ernesto Capello’s <em>City at the Center of the World: Space, History, and Modernity in Quito</em> (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2011). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 9(3), 476–484. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/384

Issue

Section

Reviews: Modernity in Quito