Ingenious intellectuals. The Modernists under the folkloric eye of Rubén M. Campos

Abstract

Rubén M. Campos was a Modernist writer and a folklorist at the times of Mexican cultural nationalism. The link between these two facets has been little explored. This paper looks at the way Campos related his experience as a Modernist to his work as researcher of Mexican folklore. The hypothesis of continuity is based on an article about the poet and patron of the modernist group, Jesús E. Valenzuela, first published in the last issue of Revista Moderna de México (1911) and later included in the book El folklore literario de México… (1929). Campos’s role as a folklorist will be discussed as transversal, in addition to the ideas of cultural nationalism and folk studies, to his conception of the Modernists not only as artists and writers, but also as intellectuals defined from a way of living, relating and talking.