La melancolía en la poesía modernista peruana

Abstract

This is an exhaustive study about melancholy. We have been able to verifying how melancholy´s concept has changed in the Occidental culture. The concept of melancholy has been developed and analyzed in the European history. First, we have investigated the melancholy in Classic time, secondly, in Middle Ages, and thirdly in Renaissance and Baroque epoch; finally, we have studied Romantic period and his predecessors: Simbolism, Decadence movement and Modernism. The Modernism period has been explored in the following chapter. The roots of this movement are located in the modernity. After, in the next pages, we have penetrated into Modernism in Peruvian literature. The most important authors and the most relevant historical events have been deeply analyzed. The Andean tradition is studied later. The Andean melancholy become more aggressive in the conquest. The utopia will appear at this moment. After the conquest, the European melancholy was inserted in the Peruvian literature. Oral literature remained in the Andean culture: two literatures, the “virreinal” and the oral coexisted simultaneously. Melancholy Andean essence come back in the Romantic period (“Melgar´s yaravies”). More relevant was the next period: the Modernism aesthetic. At this moment, the Andean melancholy gave to Peruvian literature the creative energy of the “bilis negra”. And in this period of time Andean literature will shine with powerful light.