The Tragedy of a Man Who Cursed: On Leonardo Padura's <i>The Novel of My Life</i> (2002)

Autors/ores

  • Jennifer Duprey Rutgers University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/peripherica.2.1.4

Resum

This article explores how in The Novel of My Life Heredia’s tragedy -that is forced exile- stems from a dynamics between colonialism and culture in Cuba. At the same time, this dynamics reveals the transatlantic concatenations between the imperial politics of Spain and the colonial character of nineteenth-century Cuba. Heredia’s tragedy, I argue, is depicted in Padura’s novel as a consequence of a socio-historical reality in which Heredia’s enlightened, or liberal, ideas about politics and independence where rather “misplaced ideas” in the Cuba of the 1820s. In other words, some of these European liberal ideas became “misplaced ideas” when they were displaced first to the Spanish context, and subsequently to the colonial context in Cuba. The incongruences between the political structures and culture of the Spanish dynastic state and enlightened European ideas reflected themselves on colonial Cuba.

Referències

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Descàrregues

Publicades

2022-12-29

Com citar

Duprey, J. (2022). The Tragedy of a Man Who Cursed: On Leonardo Padura’s <i>The Novel of My Life</i> (2002). Periphērica: Journal of Social, Cultural, and Literary History, 2(1), 37–69. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/peripherica.2.1.4

Número

Secció

Dossier Encuentros transatlánticos: Cuba y España