Wilde Aestheticism in Puerto Rico

• In Event: "Absolutely Modern": The Uses of Oscar Wilde in Latin American Literature and Culture (II)

Abstract

My paper explores the impact of Oscar Wilde’s work on the literary and political work of the Puerto Rican statesman Miguel Guerra-Mondragón, who in the 1920s, as speaker of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, proposed the island’s transformation into a “free associated state” of the US. A prolific translator and literary critic, as well as a renowned aesthete, Guerra-Mondragón wrote widely read translations of Salomé, Intentions, “The Decay of Lying”, and “The Critic as Artist”, and numerous well-received studies of Wilde’s work. Guerra-Mondragón’s translations and scholarship, published both in popular individual volumes and in prominent Puerto Rican periodicals, such as the Revista de las Antillas and Juan Bobo, played a vital role in bringing Oscar Wilde’s thought to Puerto Rico and Latin America. Through Guerra-Mondragón’s fusion of the literary and the political, moreover, Wilde’s aesthetic thought – hitherto presumed to have been politically stagnant – came to inform the Puerto Rican struggle to forge an independent identity in the early twentieth century. Today, Guerra-Mondragón’s literary and political work have been all but forgotten; still, his legacy remains through the ideological debates he initiated and the new generation of leaders he mentored, including Luis Muñoz Marín, who later became known as the father of modern Puerto Rico. My paper will examine the degree to which Guerra-Mondragón’s lifelong engagement with Wilde’s work came to shape the contours of the Puerto Rican cultural and political landscape.

Author

• Ana Rodriguez Navas, Loyola University Chicago