Abstract

PEREZ-ALVAREZ, SERGIO. Tomás Vargas Osorio and the Debate on Regional Literature in Colombia. perifrasis. rev.lit.teor.crit. [online]. 2025, vol.16, n.36, pp.31-47.  Epub Sep 05, 2025. ISSN 2145-8987.  https://doi.org/10.25025/perifrasis202516.36.02.

This article examines the conception of regional literature of the Santander writer Tomás Vargas Osorio (Oiba 1908 - Bucaramanga 1941), based on a reflection on his participation in the debate between nationalism and cosmopolitanism that took place in Colombia in the early 1940s. Through an analysis of his text "Santander," published in the section "The Literary Geography of Colombia," and his role in the controversy over a short story contest, both in the Revista de las Indias, the article explores how the author defended the region as more than a subordinate periphery, as a space of cultural production that poses an active resistance to the centralization of the literary canon. For the author, regionalism is not limited to costumbrismo (costumbrism), but allows us to rethink the relationship between literature and geography, thus opening new perspectives on the place of the regional in Colombian literature.

Keywords : Tomás Vargas Osorio; Santander; Colombian literature; regional literature; literary geography; nationalism; 20^th Century.

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