THE POETICS OF SPACE AS A TOOL OF NATIONAL IDENTITY FORMATION IN SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA IN THE FIRST THIRD OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of the artistic representation of geographical space in Spanish and Latin American literatures of the first third of the twentieth century as a significant factor in the formation of national identity. The relevance of the study is determined by the need for a comparative interpretation of spatial poetics in the context of historical crises caused by colonial heritage, modernization processes, and transformations of cultural self-awareness. The aim of the study is to identify the specific features of the functioning of artistic space as a cultural and ideological construct in the prose of Spanish writers of the Generation of 1898 and in the novels of Latin American authors of the first half of the twentieth century. The research material includes works by Pío Baroja, Azorín, José Eustasio Rivera, and Ricardo Güiraldes. The results of the study demonstrate that in early twentieth-century Spanish literature space performs the function of critical reflection on national history and cultural memory, whereas in the Latin American tradition it acquires a postcolonial dimension and becomes a means of symbolic construction of national cultural space. It is proven that the motifs of the road, landscape, and territory perform an integrative function, connecting individual and collective experience, historical trauma, and the prospects of cultural renewal. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the comparative analysis of Spanish and Latin American models of spatial poetics, which makes it possible to outline common and distinctive mechanisms of artistic construction of national identity in the literature of the first third of the twentieth century.