Francisco de Asís Monterde García Icazbalceta (August 9, 1894 in
Mexico City – February 27, 1985 in Mexico City) was a prolific and multifaceted Mexican writer whose career spanned over fifty years. He was an important promoter of the arts and culture in Mexico in the years following the
Revolution.
Bibliography
His parents were Francisco de Asís Ángel María Monterde
y Adalid and María Trinidad de los Dolores García Icazbalceta y Travesi de Monterde, aristocrats who both died when he was still young.[1] He studied
dentistry but never practiced. In 1924 he founded and edited the short-lived Mexican
avant-garde cultural magazine Antena. In 1925 he famously deciphered a letter that
conquistadorHernán Cortés left written in code. He wrote, in addition to plays and poetry, various novels set in
colonial Mexico, a
genre known as colonialista. In 1930 he created in conjunction with
Alejandro Gómez Arias, the department of
Mexican and
Hispano-American Literature at the
National Preparatory School. He was a founding member in 1938 of the Asociación Mexicana de Críticos de Teatro (AMCT). He belonged to the "grupo de los siete autores" (group of seven authors), a circle of dramatists active in the 1950s who revived the
theatrical arts in Mexico. He was an admirer of
José Juan Tablada and an imitator of the latter's
haiku-inspired poetry (a style at the time referred to as haikai). He held important posts in the
Ministry of Public Education. He was from 1922-65 a professor of
Spanish and
Latin-American literature at the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), his
alma mater (
M.A. 1941,
Ph.D. 1942). He served as subdirector of the
Biblioteca Nacional de México; as head librarian of the
Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia (1931); and as director of the Imprenta Universitaria de la UNAM (UNAM University Press). He was director of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores from 1973-85.
La careta de cristal: comedia en tres actos (1948)
Tres comedias : Apostolado en las Indias y martirio de un cacique, Si el amor excede al arte, ni amor ni arte a la prudencia, La pérdida de España (
Eusebio Vela; Jefferson Rea Spell; Francisco Monterde) (1948)
Una evasión romántica de Fernando Calderón : [discurso de recepción como académico de número en la Academia Mexicana] (1952)
Dos comedias Mexicanas (1953)
Teatro indígena prehispánico (
Rabinal Achí) (1955) (editor)
Teatro mexicano del siglo XX (1956) (co-written with
Manuel José Othón)
Salvador Díaz Mirón: documentos, estética (1956)
Presente involuntario : evocación dramática en tres entrevistas (1957)
La dignidad de don Quijote (1959)
Cuaderno de estampas (1961)
Netsuke haikai (1962)
Sakura, tercinas del Oriente Remoto (1963)
Una moneda de oro y otros cuentos (1965)
Moctezuma II, Senor del Anahuac (1966)
Historia de la literatura española, e Historia de la literatura mexicana (1966) (co-written with
Guillermo Díaz-Plaja)
Momentos de Oaxaca (1967)
El madrigal de Cetina (1968)
18 novelas de "El Universal ilustrado" 1922-1925 (1969)
(English) Zelson, Louis G., "Francisco Monterde (1894-)", The Americas, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Oct., 1953), pp. 159–178.
(Spanish) Ocampo de Gómez, Aurora Maura, Diccionario de escritores mexicanos, siglo XX : desde las generaciones del Ateneo y novelistas de la Revolución hasta nuestros días. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Literarios, 1988