The Reading Hunger in the American Revolutions and the Complex Work of the Creole Men of Letters ; El hambre de lectura y los usos de la biblioteca en las revoluciones americanas

Abstract

The present article aims to establish a thoughtful dialogue between different reading scenes that took place in American colonies during the revolutionary processes. The selected reading scenes show a hunger for reading (Chartier 2003) which was sometimes ridiculous and that contained hyperbolic characteristics. We consider these hyperbolic traits as the key to understand the difficulties and obstacles that the Creole men of letters had to overcome in order to configure new politic manners and to become in spokesman of communities. ; El presente trabajo se propone establecer un diálogo reflexivo entre distintas escenas de lectura antes y durante los procesos revolucionarios acaecidos en las colonias americanas. Estas escenas presentan un hambre de lectura (Chartier 1991) que roza lo satírico y cuyos rasgos hiperbólicos hacen visibles las dificultades y obstáculos que sortearon los letrados criollos para implementar nuevas costumbres políticas y sobre todo para erigirse en representantes de comunidades.