The serial sagas section in the Chilean Press in the mid XIX century: a privileged space for the chronicle

Abstract

The serial saga section of the Chilean press, published since the second half of the 19th century, was a discursive space within which texts corresponding to the background of what became known as the modernist chronicle by the end of the 19th century. The motivation of this study lies in the absence of studies regarding this turn-of-the-century chronicle. It is therefore only feasible to analyze research that addresses the chronicle of the Indias and skip to modernist ones. In light of this absence, the hypothesis of this article indicates that texts that were published in the serial saga section since 1842 are the key to understanding the emergence of the modernist chronicle in Chile, as understood by J. Ramos (2003), S. Rotker (2005), A. Mateo (2009) and C. Ossandón (1998). The body of the analysis is concentrated in the Chilean newspapers El Progreso (1842), El Huasquino (1856), La Actualidad (1858) and La Brisa de Chile (1875). The methodology of analysis is organized following the proposal of Michel Foucault (2007) on discourse and Dominique Maingueneau (2007) on enunciation. The novelty of this research is the analysis of the non-narrative or fictional material of the serial saga section, which demonstrates an emphasis on the subject that enunciates and the feeling of rupture at the time. The conclusions indicate that the non-narrative materials of the serial saga section clearly demonstrate the crisis, the collapse of institutions and societal reorganization, resulting in fugitive discourse that attempts to explain the status quo of the last fifty years of the 1800s, elements that are condensed in the modernist chronicle.