Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Decimonónica
Volume
18
Issue
1-2
Publisher
Decimonónica
Publication Date
2021
First Page
33
Last Page
48
Abstract
This study examines and evaluates the ways in which critics have dealt with the question of a Jewish thematic current, self-awareness, or perspective in the much-reprinted 1867 novel María by the Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs (1837-1895). While scholars have long exhibited an awareness of Isaacs’s paternal Jewish descent and at times made observations concerning Jewish references or a Jewish outlook in the novel, it was Doris Sommer’s 1989 article “El mal de María: (Con)fusión en un romance nacional,” later included in her influential Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991), that launched the current discussion over Jewish themes or thought in the novel. This overview first summarizes the pre-1980s debate over Jewish properties of María, identifying shifts in critical methodology that either inhibited or stimulated its growth as a question for academic study. This section of the essay is briefer, since Elzbieta Sklodowska’s 1983 “ María, de Jorge Isaacs, ante la crítica” provides a panoramic overview of María criticism at the time, and since Jewish themes are not explored as extensively in earlier studies. My essay then focuses more closely on studies from the 1980s onward and offers recommendations for how research on this topic may continue to evolve.
Recommended Citation
Lindstrom, Naomi, "Shifting Critical Approaches to the Elusive Jewishness of María by Jorge Isaacs" (2021). Decimonónica. Paper 95.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/decimononica/95