Actors, Settings, and Social Relations in Three Mid-Nineteenth-Century Mexican Periodicals

This paper analyzes the literature and illustrations of manners published in three nineteenth-century Mexican periodicals, in order to reveal the role of these texts and images in the construction of national identity. Following this analytical line, the author explores how the viewpoint of the literature of manners was born and the traits it acquired specifically during the 1850's, when the representation of Mexicans seems to have gone though its most important transition: from local and regional types to national archetypes