LITERATURE . l i i . n i . i . . r ness. Julio Ortega points out that there is a parallel in the writings or modern writers like Neruda, Paz, Carpentier, Lezama Lima, Arguedas, Rulfo, Cortazar, Garcia Marquez, Fuentes. The traditional novel in Latin America, marked by the populist sentiment, saw the writer in the role of the intellectual liberator who would denounce all that was immoral and unjust. In addition, the feudal background and Latin America's economic role provided epical situations that the novels were prompt in registering. However, the advent of modern capitalism not only affected the semi-feudal structures and their operational role vis-a-vis the internationalization of commerce and capital but also made the society so much more complex. As Fuentes points out, the traditional novel appeared to be a "static form within a static society" in spite of its yearning for change; it reflected the immediate reality in a documental sense, the moral basis and epical simplicism of which derived from a clear-cut distinction between the good and the bad. Thus the Latin American novels introduce their line-up of heroes and villians only to be replaced by the 'caudillos' in the era after the Mexican Revolution. However the shift of emphasis to the people (personalized in a regional gaucho or chieftain) and the dynamism in the movement of destiny under the complex social processes are reflected thus: in transcending the fiction of romantic populism to a state where ^heroic certainty is converted into a critical ambiguity, natural fatality into contradictory action, romantic idealism into ironic dialectic."2 As the element of imagination begins to exert itself the preoccupation with immediate reality gives way to a new space, and to a search for the profound American essence. Novels begin to recognize that man in the Latin American continent is located at the anguished juncture of an undefined future, and that to understand his predicament it is essential to dive to the roots reaching back to the 16th century. In other words, the visible reality has to be complemented by an imaginative reality, the invisible mechanism of which has to be perceived precisely in order to grapple with the present essence. There begins the new path of the modern Latin American novel. The critical attitude in the observation of reality as a revindication of the American conscience — and consciousness -- started appearing in the writings of the twenties and thirties which were still in the tradition of naturalism and realism (of Balzac, Zola and Dickens.) However, a further upsurge of this critical attitude came up from two directions. In 1955 the Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo used universal myths in his treatment of situations, types and language of rural Mexico in his novel Pedro 54 January - March 1983