On peripheral modernities

Abstract

In this work I use the essay “Misplaced Ideas: Literature and Society in Late-Nineteenth Century Brazil”, by Roberto Schwarz, to stuty the survival of feudality and favor inherited from the Iberian Colonialism, during the Chilean “Belle Époque”. At this period, social inequalities acquired hypertrophic proportions due to the capital local elites received for their incursion in coal mining and saltpeter exploration – this last one as a result of the Pacific War (1879-1883). I examine the discrepancies showed by the Chilean peripheral modernity at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, in three works: the short story “El rey burgués” (1888), by Ruben Dario, the film Julio comienza en Julio (1979), with a script by Silvio Caiozzi and Gustavo Frías, and the short story collection Sub terra (1904), by Baldomero Lillo.