UC Davis

War discourse is inherently contradictory. This dissertation aims to deploy and develop dialectical criticism to account for the impact of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), or Paraguayan War, in the literature of the four combatant nations – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Literary criticism classifies the war as a turning point in these countries’ national history and the modes of representation of collective experiences. However, it comes up short in examining how this change happened and the consequences of these new forms of depicting reality. I ask in what ways a conflict that killed up to 1 million people reshaped representation and literary discourse. How did these new art manifestations assist in understanding the devastation of war? My objective is to clarify the salient points of a critical moment in history and identify their legacy. On the one hand, the war caused a search for words, and, on the other, there is an abundant textual production about the topic. Many of these texts only became available in recent decades, thanks to the reopening of archives after the end of military dictatorships and digitalization of rare documents. Based on Literary Criticism, Historiography, and studies on race and nation-building, I analyze canonical works of art and rediscovered texts. Writers such as Machado de Assis, Carlos Guido y Spano, and Juan E. O’Leary demonstrate how war literature played a fundamental role in political discussions. Besides, the expansion of caricature at the time caused a surge of satirical poetry. Literary conventions shaped the way the collective memory assimilated facts and historical figures. This study informs our theoretical understanding of art and society. It evaluates how much of these wartime discursive conventions still play a role in the four neighboring countries’ political relations.