Classic Reception in Chilean Journalism and Political Writing at the Beginning of The War of The Pacific (1879): On Heroes, Deeds and Dictatorships

Abstract

Within the framework of classical reception studies, this article studies the references to motifs and elements of the classical tradition in a corpus Chilean public-opinion essays about the War of the Pacific written in mid-1879. The analysis highlights two discursive threads, one laudatory and one critical, in order to demonstrate how the use of the classical tradition reveals an idealized image of the ancient world, which served to strengthen the meaning of the arguments presented.