Itinerant literature: notes on El Correo de Ultramar and its “Revista Literaria”

Abstract

“Mas aislados se encuentran, desunidos/ esos pueblos nacidos para aliarse”: this is how the fifth line of the poem by Colombian diplomat José Maria Torres Caicedo starts – echoing a call for the union of the Latin-American peoples – in the periodical El Correo de Ultramar, periodico politico, literario, mercantil e industrial in 1857. The publication seemed to aim at accomplishing this mission. Published in Spanish in Paris, it was distributed in various cities all over America. By looking at the publication in its Revista Literaria, from 1844 on, of the Mysteries of London, by Paul Féval, our objective is to suggest a possible approach to the “roman-feuilleton” in its first phase.