AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

This dissertation investigates how Juan L Ortiz (1896-1978), Hugo Padeletti (1928), and Arturo Carrera (1948), interpret and represent Chinese classical and Zen Buddhist systems of thinking in their poetry, in 20th century Argentina. I argue that these authors share a common aesthetical and philosophical goal in their interpretations of Chinese, and Japanese systems of thinking portrayed in their poetry. They are seeking philosophical and aesthetical alternatives to Eurocentric Modernity. In order to achieve this, these three authors lean in their poetry towards the dissolution of the self, passivity, contemplation, silence and exposure to the outside. Nonetheless, their interpretations of these Chinese and Japanese systems of thinking change relative to the way in which they react to historical, social, cultural and political events that shaped their cultural contexts. My investigation involves a close reading of the poetry of each author in the context of contemporary literary currents in 20th Century Argentina, in order to trace differences, and similarities, as well as individual specificities in their interpretations and representations of classical Chinese and Zen Buddhist verbal aesthetics and thought. The purpose of this research is to explore how, alongside during the 20th century, these Argentinian poets critique European Modernity in Argentina, through recurring to orientalism, as an alternative model to the Cartesian Rationalism and the other ideologies associated to the dominant discourse of progress.