“Civic Humanism”. An episode in the Spanish American Republicanism

Abstract

In this paper, we attempt to rethink the relationship of literature and politics through the Spanish-American Republicanism. Classical literature was one of the interests of a good part of the "literate city" in the first half of the 20th century. The work of the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó opens more systematically the dichotomy between Greek restraint and American political chaos. Arielism would have a long line of successors. Besides others, the Mexican group "Ateneo de la Juventud" (Atheneum of Youth) took up Rodó's legacy under the leadership of Pedro Henríquez Ureña. From among its young members, Alfonso Reyes stands out. The group rethought the ancient culture in relation to the problems of the time. The sum of these currents has resulted in a humanistic vocation that ideally aspired to a new republicanism: the Republic of Letters.