The Cuban Condition: Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature: 1 (Cambridge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature, Series Number 1)
Cambridge University Press, 6/15/1989
EAN 9780521327473, ISBN10: 0521327474
Hardcover, 196 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
The sense of the radical newness of Spanish America found in literary works from the chronicles of the conquest to the work of the criollistas has more recently given way to a stronger recognition of the transatlantic roots of much Spanish-American literature. This indebtedness does not imply subservience; rather, the New World's cultural and literary autonomy lies in the distinctive ways in which it assimilated its cultural inheritance. Professor Pérez Firmat explores this process of assimilation or transculturation in the case of Cuba, and proposes a new understanding of the issue of Cuban national identity through revisionary readings of both literary and non-literary works by Juan Marinello, Fernando Ortiz, Nicolds Guillén, Alejo Carpentier and others, dating from the early decades of the twentieth century, a time of intense self-reflection in the nation's history. Using a critical vocabulary derived from these works, he argues that Cuban identity is translational rather than foundational and that cubanÃÂa emerges from a nuanced, self-conscious recasting of foreign models.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Mr. Cuba
2. The politics of enchantment
3. Cuban counterpoint
4. Nicolás Guillén between the son and the sonnet
5. Mulatto madrigals
6. The discourse of the tropics
7. The creation of Juan Criollo
8. Shifting grounds
9. Land or language
Notes
Bibliography
Index.