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- Title
'Palabras de la ciencia': Pedro Castera and Scientific Writing in Mexico's Fin de Siècle.
- Authors
Blanco, María del
- Abstract
This essay explores the career of the understudied writer Pedro Castera (1846-1906), who is regarded as one of the first practitioners of science fiction in Mexico. A man of many talents, Castera is one of the most eccentric and eclectic figures in the intellectual life of fin-de-siècle Mexico City. His career took many turns: While during specific periods he devoted himself to writing and participating within the liberal, cosmopolitan culture of Mexico City, he often disappeared from the public eye to devote himself to the development of inventions in the mining industry. The essay discusses the different meanings of 'invention' within Castera's oeuvre, namely poetic and scientific innovation. Setting these two concepts within the domains of literature and scientific writing in the global and local fin de siècle, the essay investigates how Castera's journalism and fiction (specifically his 1890 novel Querens) are representative of the wider question of scientific development in Mexico and Latin America as a whole during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, it explores the intersections of aesthetics and science during a critical period of modern intellectual history, in which these two areas of knowledge were gradually defining themselves as two distinctive cultures.
- Subjects
MEXICO; CASTERA, Pedro, 1838-1906; MEXICAN science fiction; MEXICAN authors; INVENTIONS in literature; TURN of the century (19th-20th century); SCIENTIFIC development; MINERAL industries
- Publication
Science & Education, 2014, Vol 23, Issue 3, p541
- ISSN
0926-7220
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1007/s11191-012-9514-0