In Naciones intelectuales, Ignacio M. Sanchez Prado explores the processes and works that laid the foundations of a new literary modernity in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. Focusing on a period that goes from the signing of the Constitution in 1917 to the death of Alfonso Reyes in 1959, Sanchez Prado centers his analysis on the way in which four elements of Mexican cultural practice - the notion of literature, the figure of the intellectual, the creation of academic institutions and the definition of national identity - emerged through the various debates held by leading figures of the period. Through an appropriation of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of 'literary field', the book analyzes different key moments, controversies, and cultural interventions, which ultimately led the diverse aesthetic spectrum created by the Revolution into becoming a highly institutional system of literature. Sanchez Prado's work deals with a wide range of writers, including Alfonso Reyes, Jorge Cuesta, Manuel Maples Arce, Ramon Lopez Velarde, Francisco Monterde, Jose Gaos, the Hiperion philosophers, and Octavio Paz. As a result, this books offers a cartography of Mexican literary institutions unprecedented in scope, which will allow readers, students, and scholars to understand the construction of modern Mexican literature in a clear, rigorous, and systematic way.
