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
- 1 Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de paciencia and the Unfinished Foundational Story of Cuban Literature
- 2 José Martín Félix de Arrate’s Enlightenment Discourse of Cuban Exceptionalism
- Part II Cuban Literature’s Long Nineteenth Century
- 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
1 - Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de paciencia and the Unfinished Foundational Story of Cuban Literature
from Part I - Literature in the Early Colony
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
- 1 Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de paciencia and the Unfinished Foundational Story of Cuban Literature
- 2 José Martín Félix de Arrate’s Enlightenment Discourse of Cuban Exceptionalism
- Part II Cuban Literature’s Long Nineteenth Century
- 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 addresses the “lost” epic poem Espejo de paciencia (1608) by Silvestre de Balboa, which was rediscovered in 1836 and has, since then, been considered the first work of Cuban literature, a status that has also been contested. The poem narrates the 1604 kidnapping and freeing of a Spanish prelate, then Bishop of Cuba, by French pirates. The chapter first examines the poem’s archival history, the nineteenth-century debates about slavery and race that framed the poem’s consideration as a foundational work, and the debates into the twenty-first century contributing to the as-yet-unresolved question of its foundational status. The chapter then details Balboa’s imaginative recasting of European Renaissance conventions of the epic genre, in a version distinct to the Americas and with new epistemological consequences in the treatment of Cuban nature and in the literary creation of a distinct local territory of inhabitants, marked by a poetics of community and loaded with cultural heterogeneity.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature , pp. 41 - 51Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Works Cited
Alvar, Manuel. Juan de Castellanos: Tradición española y realidad americana. Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1972.Google Scholar
Arcos, Jorge Luis, editor. “Historia de la literatura cubana.” Letras Cubanas, vol. 1, 2002, pp. 13–17.Google Scholar
Balboa, Silvestre de. Espejo de paciencia. Edited by Marrero-Fente, Raúl, Cátedra, 2010.Google Scholar
Chacón y Calvo, José María. “El primer poema escrito en Cuba.” Revista de Filología Española, vol. 8, no. 2, 1921, pp. 170–175.Google Scholar
Cruz-Taura, Graciella. Espejo de paciencia y Silvestre de Balboa en la historia de Cuba. Iberoamericana, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo. Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias. Edited by Baraibar, Álvaro, Iberoamericana, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goergen, Juana. Literatura fundacional americana: ‘El espejo de paciencia’. Pliegos, 1993.Google Scholar
González, Lola. “La naturaleza en el Espejo de paciencia de Silvestre de Balboa.” Arrabal, no. 1, 1998, pp. 13–22.Google Scholar
González Echevarría, Roberto. “Reflections on the Espejo de paciencia.” Cuban Studies, vol. 16, 1986, pp. 101–121.Google Scholar
Lamas, Carmen. “Race and the Critical Trajectory of Espejo de paciencia (1608, 1838).” Latin American Research Review, vol. 47, no. 1, 2012, pp. 115–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marrero-Fente, Raúl. “Classical Epyllion and Tropical Cornucopia in Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de paciencia.” Translated by Choi, Imogen, The Rise of Spanish American Poetry (1500–1700), edited by Cacho, Rodrigo and Choi, Imogen, Legenda, 2019, pp. 239–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marrero-Fente, Raúl. “Elementos léxicos y botánicos de la cornucopia tropical en Espejo de paciencia de Silvestre de Balboa.” RILCE: Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. 36, no. 1, 2020, pp. 371–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marrero-Fente, Raúl . Epic, Empire and Community in the Atlantic World: Silvestre de Balboa’s “Espejo de paciencia.” Bucknell UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Pichardo y Tapia, Esteban. Diccionario provincial casi-razonado de vozes y frases cubanas. Imprenta El Trabajo de L. F. Dediot, 1875.Google Scholar
Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton UP, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roig y Mesa, Juan Tomás. Diccionario botánico de nombres vulgares cubanos. Vols 1, 2, Seonane, Fernández, y Cía, 1953.Google Scholar
Wakefield, Steven. “Three Lives of a Cuban Epic: Balboa, Echeverría, Carpentier and the Espejo de paciencia.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 84, no. 3, 2007, pp. 387–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wofford, Susanne. “Epic and the Politics of the Origin Tale: Virgil, Ovid, Spenser, and Native American Aetiology.” Epic Traditions in the Contemporary World: The Poetics of Community, edited by Beissinger, Margaret, Tylus, Jane, and Wofford, Susanne, U of California P, 1999, pp. 239–269.Google Scholar