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: 31 August 2024
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
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 321 - 335Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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