¿Valiente y viril? Masculinidades, cuerpo e identidad en la literatura costarricense (1888-1954)

Abstract

The formative period of Costa Rican literature has been typically characterized within the productions of costumbrist realism that yearn for and promote the values of a traditional patriarchal society, which has founded central imaginaries of national identity. However, this narrative production is populated by a great variety of characters ranging from working peasants to the privileged members of the coffee elites of the Central Valley. A "brave and virile" people is outlined as the masculine ideal for many of these characters, directly linking masculinity and the nation. The virile value seems to structure not only moral obligations of the subject but also model behaviors that are identified with an apparently homogeneous identity.¿Valiente y viril? starts by questioning these representations in fiction with the objective of rereading Costa Rican literary history between 1888 and 1954 from a gender perspective. These questions seek to know what happens when male characters are analyzed outside an idea of masculine universality in order to situate them in a system of sex and gender relations and thus understand how relations of domination, violence and exclusion towards women are created.

Keywords

• cultural history
• masculinity
• literary history
• gender theories
• Latin American literature