ENSAYO SOBRE LA CONCEPCIÓN ESTÉTICA Y LA TEORÍA ARTÍSTICA EN LOS ESCRITOS “ARTE Y MORAL, DISCURSOS, LECCIONES, &” (1889) DE HONORATO VÁZQUEZ OCHOA (Primera Parte)

Abstract

The aesthetic ideas and artistic theory of Honorato Vázquez Ochoa were collected and published in 1889 under the title of Art and morality, discourses, lessons, &., this forming a corpus of conceptual and ideological thought. This compilation consists of nine writings –articles, speeches and class lessons –, covering chronologically the period from 1886 to 1888. In them, Vázquez advocates a neoplatonic metaphysical aesthetic, governed by the theological causalism of christian dogmatics, and interrelated with historicist romanticism. At the same time, it establishes that artistic creation –particularly literary– must be based on the poetics of the classicist canon, and teleologically directed towards a moral purpose of regenerationist ambition, namely, that which the most orthodox catholicism advocates as patriotic salvation and of one’s own Ecuadorian nation.