New Transatlantic Reading of El Iniciador of Montevideo: The Influence of French Thought on the Ideology of the Young Argentinian Generation

Abstract

In the midst of the Rosista government, the young Argentinian generation exiled in Montevideo raised in El Iniciador the banner of critical journalism to lay the foundations of the Argentine state. This work shows that Miguel Cané, Andrés Lamas, Juan Bautista Alberdi and consorts were not simply copyists of the new French writers but, building on postrevolutionary French philosophical postulates, constructed a collection of eclectic principles adapted to the Argentine reality, in order to create the social-man of the modern era. To achieve the national resurgence, four axes of action were proposed: placing literature at the center of social progress, moralizing society by pointing to social parasites, updating laws in accordance with people's habits and customs, and integrating social and human sciences to life. These objectives are based on four fundamental precepts of different French authors to be studied in this article: literature is the expression of society, law is life, jury is freedom and women's emancipation is the first condition of the new sociability.