Literary contests as performative acts: Certamen Varela 1887

Abstract

During the latter half of the XIX and early XX century we witnessed the incipient process of the (relative) autonomization of the field determined by the professionalization of the craft of writing and the entry of new players in the literary field (middle class and women). One of the main ways to account for this process is the development of literary contests and competitions, which allow us to set the disputes that take place in the field, the canon that preponderate in this and give the opportunity to the authors of “measured” with their peers and with a part of the critical device of the time (the jury). In this article shall be taken as an example the Certamen Varela 1887 because of its importance in the Chilean letters and it’s configured as synthesis of the processes developing in the literary field. Along with this, it will be set up as a consecration of the literary field that still dependent because of the performativity quality in the embryonic chilean literature.