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
- 3 Alexander von Humboldt and the Cultural Invention of Cuba Among Its Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Elite
- 4 Philosophy and Pedagogy in Félix Varela, José de la Luz y Caballero, and Enrique José Varona
- 5 Mercedes Merlin and the Rhetoric of Life Writing, Exile, and Race
- 6 The Lyric Vernacular of Cuban Romanticism
- 7 Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as Literary Precursor and Transatlantic Intellectual
- 8 Racialized Futures
- 9 Journalism and Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture
- 10 José Martí as Hemispheric Visionary
- 11 Julián del Casal and the Other Faces of Cuban Modernismo
- 12 Performance Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Theater
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Culture in the Twentieth-Century Republic
- 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
7 - Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as Literary Precursor and Transatlantic Intellectual
from Part II - Cuban Literature’s Long Nineteenth Century
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
- 3 Alexander von Humboldt and the Cultural Invention of Cuba Among Its Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Elite
- 4 Philosophy and Pedagogy in Félix Varela, José de la Luz y Caballero, and Enrique José Varona
- 5 Mercedes Merlin and the Rhetoric of Life Writing, Exile, and Race
- 6 The Lyric Vernacular of Cuban Romanticism
- 7 Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as Literary Precursor and Transatlantic Intellectual
- 8 Racialized Futures
- 9 Journalism and Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture
- 10 José Martí as Hemispheric Visionary
- 11 Julián del Casal and the Other Faces of Cuban Modernismo
- 12 Performance Worlds of Nineteenth-Century Cuban Theater
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Culture in the Twentieth-Century Republic
- 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 pioneering role of Getrudis Gómez de Avellaneda as a transatlantic intellectual; as the initiator of what became the long-lasting trope among Cuban writers of lejanía [distance] or imagining Cuba from afar; and as a precursor of modern feminism whose persistent interweaving of race and gender, the chapter argues, constitutes the writer’s signature contribution to Cuban literature. Devoting much of the essay to Gómez de Avellaneda’s fiction, including Sab, Dos mujeres, Guatimozín, and El artista barquero o los cuatro cinco de junio, the chapter teases out this body of work’s exemplification of both early abolitionism and a feminist consciousness, tracing the latter to Gómez de Avellaneda’s essay on Mercedes Merlin, which established the first female genealogy of Cuban literature.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 126 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
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