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(''Mister President'') is a 1946 novel written in Spanish by Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974). A landmark text in Latin American literature, explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society. Asturias makes early use of a literary technique now known as magic realism. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town. Although does not explicitly identify its setting as early twentieth-century Guatemala, the novel's title character was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias began writing the novel in the 1920s and finished it in 1933, but the strict censorship policies of Guatemalan dictatorial governments delayed its publication for thirteen years. The character of the President rarely appears in the story but Asturias creates a number of other characters to show the terrible effects of living under a dictatorship. His use of dream imagery, onomatopoeia, simile, and repetition of particular phrases, combined with a discontinuous structure, which consists of abrupt changes of style and viewpoint, springs from surrealist and ultraist influences. The style of influenced a generation of Latin American authors. The themes of Asturias's novel, such as the inability to tell reality apart from dreams, the power of the written word in the hands of authorities, and the alienation produced by tyranny, center around the experience of living under a dictatorship. On its eventual publication in Mexico in 1946, quickly met with critical acclaim. In 1967, Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work. This international acknowledgment was celebrated throughout Latin America, where it was seen as a recognition of the region's literature as a whole. Since then, has been adapted for the screen and theater. ==Background== In a 1970 interview, the German critic Gunter W. Lorenz asked Miguel Ángel Asturias why he began to write and the novelist replied: This experience, at the age of 18, led Asturias to write "" ("The Political Beggars"), an unpublished short story that would later develop into his first novel, .〔Himelblau, 1973, 45〕 Asturias began writing in 1922, while he was still a law student in Guatemala. He moved to Paris in 1923, where he studied anthropology at the Sorbonne under George Raymond. While living in France, he continued to work on the book and also associated with members of the Surrealist movement as well as fellow future Latin American writers such as Arturo Uslar Pietri and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier.〔Himelblau, 1973, 47〕 The novel was completed in 1933, shortly before Asturias returned to Guatemala. Even though was written in France and is set in an unnamed Latin American country, governed by an unnamed President in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, there is still plenty of support linking the novel to the Estrada Cabrera era in Guatemala. For example, as critic Jack Himelblau explains, "Asturias () wrote his novel primarily with his compatriots in mind, who, undoubtedly, had lived through the tyranny of Estrada Cabrera from 1898 to 1920."〔Himelblau, 1973, 56〕 Manuel Estrada Cabrera was notorious for his brutal repression of dissent in Guatemala, and Asturias had been involved in protests against his rule in 1920.〔Himelblau, 1973, 44〕 Asturias integrated and reworked incidents from Estrada Cabrera's dictatorship into the novel, such as the torture of a political adversary, who had been tricked "into believing that his innocent wife had been unfaithful to him".〔 Estrada Cabrera was eventually forced out of office as a result of popular disturbances and the intervention of U.S. and other foreign diplomats. Rather than go into exile, however, the ex-president opted to defend himself against criminal charges.〔Gail Martin, 2000, 560–561〕 In the ensuing trial, Asturias served as a legal secretary and so, as Gregory Rabassa's biographical sketch points out, he had the opportunity to base his own fictional leader—the President—on his observations of the disgraced Guatemalan dictator.〔Rabassa, 170〕 As Asturias himself put it: was not published until years after it was written. Asturias claims that Jorge Ubico y Castañeda, the dictator of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944, "prohibited its publication because his predecessor, Estrada Cabrera, was my which meant that the book posed a danger to him as well".〔 Additionally, because Ubico was Guatemala's dictator while the novel was being finished, critics have linked him with the characterization of the President in .〔Grieb, 202〕 As Himelblau notes, elements of the book "could easily have been interpreted as reflecting () General Ubico's dictatorship".〔Himelblau, 1973, 49〕 The novel eventually first saw the light of day in Mexico, in 1946, at a time when Juan José Arévalo was serving as Guatemala's first democratically elected president. Despite the manifest influence of Asturias's experiences in Guatemala under Estrada Cabrera and Ubico, and despite certain historical ties, critic Richard Callan observes that Asturias's "attention is not limited to his times and nation, but ranges across the world and reaches back through the ages. By linking his created world with the dawn of history, and his twentieth-century characters with myths and archetypes, he has anchored them to themes of universal significance."〔Callan, 423〕 Asturias himself affirms that he "wrote without a social commitment".〔Lorenz, 159〕 By this he means that unlike some of his other books, such as (''Legends of Guatemala'') or (''Men of Maize''), " had a wider relevance because it did not focus so heavily on Guatemalan myths and traditions."〔 Asturias depicts aspects of life that are common to all dictatorial regimes, and so establishes as one of his most influential works. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「El Señor Presidente」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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