Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Unfinished Histories
- Part I Literature in the Early Colony
- Part II Cuban Literature’s Long Nineteenth Century
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Culture in the Twentieth-Century Republic
- 13 The Literary Intellectuals of the Early Cuban Republic
- 14 The Invention of the Black Cuban in the Early Twentieth Century
- 15 The Fluid Expressive Communities of Cuba’s Interwar Avant-Gardes
- 16 Lydia Cabrera and Afro-Caribbean Imaginaries
- 17 The Fictions of New Urban Subjects
- 18 The Esthetics of Dulce María Loynaz
- 19 José Lezama Lima and the Orbits of Orígenes
- 20 Alejo Carpentier and Cuba’s Literary Twentieth Century
- 21 The Weighted Literary Islands of Virgilio Piñera
- Part IV The Revolution’s Literary-Cultural Initiatives and Their Early Discontents
- Part V Cuba and Its Diasporas into the New Millennium
- Epilogue
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
20 - Alejo Carpentier and Cuba’s Literary Twentieth Century
from Part III - Literary and Intellectual Culture in the Twentieth-Century Republic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Unfinished Histories
- Part I Literature in the Early Colony
- Part II Cuban Literature’s Long Nineteenth Century
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Culture in the Twentieth-Century Republic
- 13 The Literary Intellectuals of the Early Cuban Republic
- 14 The Invention of the Black Cuban in the Early Twentieth Century
- 15 The Fluid Expressive Communities of Cuba’s Interwar Avant-Gardes
- 16 Lydia Cabrera and Afro-Caribbean Imaginaries
- 17 The Fictions of New Urban Subjects
- 18 The Esthetics of Dulce María Loynaz
- 19 José Lezama Lima and the Orbits of Orígenes
- 20 Alejo Carpentier and Cuba’s Literary Twentieth Century
- 21 The Weighted Literary Islands of Virgilio Piñera
- Part IV The Revolution’s Literary-Cultural Initiatives and Their Early Discontents
- Part V Cuba and Its Diasporas into the New Millennium
- Epilogue
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter examines the work of Alejo Carpentier, who achieved canonical status linked to the 1960s Latin American Boom but whose body of work registers distinct literary-cultural moments of Cuba’s and Latin America’s almost entire twentieth century and who, unlike many other Cuban writers of his generation, navigated postrevolutionary cultural politics such that he continued to be viewed as a “revolutionary” writer. Drawing on persistent questions about the legitimacy of Carpentier’s claims to Cubanness (he was a childhood immigrant whose first language was French), the chapter suggests that the writer’s prevarications regarding his origins tell us something about notions of belonging and membership in Cuba in the republican and revolutionary periods. The chapter organizes its concise overview of Carpentier’s entire oeuvre into successive periods of Carpentier’s “becoming” – first a Cuban, then a Latin American writer, and then a writer of the revolution.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 321 - 335Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Works Cited
Arellano, Jerónimo. Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America. Bucknell UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Birkenmaier, Anke. Alejo Carpentier y la cultura del surrealismo en América Latina. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birkenmaier, Anke . “From Surrealism to Popular Art: Paul Deharme’s Radio Theory.” Modernism/Modernity, vol. 16, no. 2, 2009, pp. 357–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camacho, Jorge. “Alejo Carpentier: Imágenes y oraciones negras en ¡Écue-Yamba-Ó!” Hypermedia Magazine, 12 May 2020, https://www.hypermediamagazine.com/literatura/ensayo/alejo-carpentier-imagenes-y-oraciones-negras-en-ecue-yamba-o/.Google Scholar
Cancio Isla, Wilfredo. Crónicas de la impaciencia: El periodismo de Alejo Carpentier. Colibrí, 2010.Google Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo . “The City of Columns.” Translated by Michael Schuessler, Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquests, edited by Parkinson Zamora, Lois and Kaup, Monica, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 244–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo . Conferencias, edited by López Lemus, Virgilio, Letras Cubanas, 1987.Google Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo . “Excerpts from ‘Questions Concerning the Contemporary Latin American Novel’.” Translated by Michael Schuessler, Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquests, edited by Parkinson Zamora, Lois and Kaup, Monika, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 259–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo . The Harp and the Shadow. Translated by Thomas Christensen and Carol Christensen, Mercury House, 1990.Google Scholar
Carpentier, Alejo . The Kingdom of This World. [1949.] Translated by Pablo Medina, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017.Google Scholar
Castro, Fidel. Palabras a los intelectuales. Comité de intelectuales y artistas de apoyo a la Revolución Cubana, 1961.Google Scholar
Castro, Fidel . “Words to the Intellectuals.” Radical Perspectives in the Arts, edited by Baxandall, Lee, Penguin, 1972, pp. 267–298.Google Scholar
Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Vanderbilt UP, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fornet, Ambrosio. “Carpentier, editor.” Carpentier o la ética de la escritura, Unión, 2006, pp. 201–221.Google Scholar
Gilman, Claudia. Entre la pluma y el fusil: Debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina. Siglo XXI, 2003.Google Scholar
Glissant, Édouard. “Alejo Carpentier et ‘l’autre Amérique’.” Critique, vol. 10, no. 105, 1956, pp. 113–119.Google Scholar
González Echevarría, Roberto. Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home. Cornell UP, 1977. 2nd ed. U of Texas P, 1990.Google Scholar
González Echevarría, Roberto . “Los secretos de Alejo Carpentier.” Nexos, 1 Jan. 2019, pp. 62–64.Google Scholar
González Echevarría, Roberto, and Müller-Bergh, Klaus. Alejo Carpentier: Bibliographical Guide. Greenwood, 1983.Google Scholar
Gras, Dunia. “Manuel Scorza y la internacionalización del mercado literario latinoamericano: Del patronato del libro peruano a la organización continental de los festivales del libro (1956–1960).” Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 45, no. 197, 2001, pp.741–754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaup, Monika. “‘¡Vaya Papaya!’: Cuban Baroque and Visual Culture in Alejo Carpentier, Ricardo Porro, and Ramón Alejandro.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 1, 2009, pp.156–171.Google Scholar
Lezama Lima, José. “Baroque Curiosity.” Translated by María Pérez and Anke Birkenmaier, Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquests, edited by Parkinson Zamora, Lois and Kaup, Monika, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 212–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lezama Lima, José . “La curiosidad barroca.” La expresión americana, edited by Chiapi, Iremar, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005, pp. 89–119.Google Scholar
Masiello, Francine. “Rethinking Neocolonial Esthetics: Literature, Politics, and Intellectual Community in Cuba’s Revista de Avance.” Latin American Research Review, vol. 28, no. 2, 1993, pp. 3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuez, Iván de la. “Prólogo: Y la música creó a Cuba.” La música en Cuba: Orígenes e historia: Del clasicismo colonial al afrocubanismo, by Alejo Carpentier, [1946]. Libros del Kultrum, 2022, pp. 7–17.Google Scholar
Pancrazio, James J. The Logic of Fetishism: Alejo Carpentier and the Cuban Tradition. Bucknell UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Parkinson Zamora, Lois, and Kaup, Monika. “Baroque, New World Baroque, Neobaroque: Categories and Concepts.” Baroque New Worlds. Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquests, edited by Parkinson Zamora, Lois and Kaup, Monica, Duke UP, 2010, pp. 1–35.Google Scholar
Prieto, Abel. “Cultura, cubanidad, cubanía.” Conferencia “La Nación y la Emigración.” Editorial Política, 1994, pp. 38–79.Google Scholar
Rae, Caroline. “In Havana and Paris: The Musical Activities of Alejo Carpentier.” Music & Letters, vol. 89, no. 3, 2008, pp. 373–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raggi, Armando. “Las recurrencias de la memoria.” Recuento de moradas, by Alejo Carpentier, edited by Rodríguez Beltrán, Rafael and Raggi, Armando, Letras Cubanas, 2017, pp. 5–77.Google Scholar
Rogers, Charlotte. Mourning El Dorado: Literature and Extractivism in the Contemporary American Tropics. U of Virginia P, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rojas, Rafael. La polis literaria: El boom, la revolución y otras polémicas de la guerra fría. Taurus, 2018.Google Scholar
Rojas, Rafael . Tumbas sin sosiego: Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano. Anagrama, 2006.Google Scholar
Sánchez, María Carla, and Schlossberg, Linda, editors. Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion. NYU P, 2001.Google Scholar
Siskind, Mariano. Cosmopolitan Desires: Global Modernity and World Literature in Latin America. Northwestern UP, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Hugh. Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom. [1971.] Updated edition with a new afterword, Da Capo Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Tomé, Lester. “The Racial Other’s Dancing Body in El milagro de anaquillé (1927): Avant-Garde Ballet and Ethnography of Afro-Cuban Performance.” Cuban Studies no. 46, 2018, pp. 185–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahlström, Victor. Los enigmas de Alejo Carpentier: La presencia oculta de un trauma. Etudes romanes de Lund. Lund U, 2018.Google Scholar
Warnes, Christopher. Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar