Lecturas

LECTURAS BASICAS

“Viaje a la semilla”

Ecué-Yamba-O

Los pasos perdidos
Dice un tal Mantex: The Lost Steps (1953) is a story told twice. A disillusioned north-American musicologist flees his empty existence in New York City. He takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization – the upper reaches of a great South American river. The novel describes his search, his adventures, the revival of his creative powers, and the remarkable decision he makes in a village that seems to be truly outside history.

El reino de este mundo
Dice un tal Mantex: The Kingdom of This World is a marvelously compressed account of the slave uprising and first revolution of the early nineteenth century in San Domingo – now Haiti. Carpentier uses ‘magical realism’, long before it became fashionable, to depict the contradictions between political reality and religious or mythical beliefs. The story passes rapidly in a series of vivid scenes from the early unsuccessful uprising led by Macandal, then Bouckman who led Haiti in its fight for independence from France, and finally to Henri Christophe the revolutionary leader who later became Emperor of Haiti, and who built Sans Souci and La Ferrière Citadel. | Ver también el resumen de Alberto Pineda.

El siglo de las luces
Dice un tal Mantex: Explosion in a Cathedral is set in Cuba at the time of the French Revolution. The novel aims to capture the immense changes sweeping the Caribbean at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century – complete with its wars, sea-life and people. It is a biographical novel which focuses on the adventures of Victor Hughes, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English.

El recurso del método

LECTURAS ADICIONALES 

Guerra del tiempo

El acoso
Dice un tal Mantex: The Chase is set in Havana of 1956 where Batista’s tyrannical rule serves as the backdrop for the story of two young men whose lives become intertwined with the prostitute, Estrella. An anonymous man flees a team of shadowy, relentless political assassins, and ultimately takes refuge in a symphony auditorium during a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. This novella is particularly interesting because of the multiple, disjointed narrations and its polyphonic structure.

Concierto barroco – see related X-file

Consagración de la primavera

El arpa y la sombra

La musica en Cuba

Hay que decidir cuales seran las principales. Yo quiero estudiar las que vienen con *.

* active participation in class [I have to create ways for them to do this]
2 presentations: brief on a text we are not reading together, and long
journal which is commentary toward long paper / research report
research paper