SOURCE: Fulk, Randal C. “Form and Style in the Short Stories of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera.” Hispanic Journal 10, no. 1 (fall 1988): 127-32.

In the following essay, Fulk discusses Nájera's short stories as an expression of the refined style and universal themes associated with early Spanish American modernism.

The refined style the Mexican writer Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera (1859-1895) displays in his collections of short stories Cuentos frágiles (1883) and Cuentos color de humo (1890-1894) gives Nájera the distinction, shared with the Cuban José Martí, of being an initiator of modernism in Spanish American literature. As Ivan A. Schulman notes: “El Duque Job [one of Nájera's several pseudonyms] prefería un estilo afrancesado, de giros y vocablos franceses, de ambientes parisienses, y de temas frívolos aprendidos de Mendès, Coppée, Musset, Paul de Saint Victor y Gautier.”¹

As a newspaperman, Gutiérrez N...