The Ateneo Mexicano : the cultural constellation of mid-nineteenth century Mexico, 1840-1850

Abstract

This thesis is about a forgotten group, made up of the leading Mexican intellectuals and politicians of the 1840s, who put aside their different party interests and came together, to form the Ateneo Mexicano, an educational institution with its own journal that was committed to fostering Mexican culture. Studied here for the first time, the present study offers a sense of who the ateneístas were, what they were hoping to achieve, and how they set about attempting to do so, at a time of acute political instability. The central argument of this thesis revolves around how the cultural constellation of the Ateneo Mexicano (1840-1850) set about creating a national literary discourse. Furthermore, it argues that its intellectual nationalism went beyond the creation of a new national poetry, in the way that its members developed a multidisciplinary and practical approach to knowledge. This study contends that the Ateneo Mexicano’s cultural project, involved promoting a sociocultural vision that was meant to reach out to and include the wider public, in an attempt to instil a sense of nationhood among the population at a critical time in which Mexico was undergoing a crisis of confidence.