Abstract

RUIZ PRADO, MARILÉ. The Alejo Carpentier's Thinking on American Culture in his Epistles. UH [online]. 2016, n.281, pp.4-17. ISSN 0253-9276.

To re-construct the biography of a writer, study the process of creation of his or her work, better understand some of its aspects, and comprehend the influencing epocal atmosphere and its social web, the analysis of epistolary genre as documentary support is a revealing way which has been nevertheless seldom used in the studies on Latino-American literature. That is the case of the Alejo Carpentier's epistolary, a corpus which remains practically unpublished, regardless of its value to grasp the insights of a cultural history that no other kind of documentation linked to him is able so neatly to expose. His correspondence, carefully saved by Alejo Carpentier Foundation, is not only a priceless source to study the thinking of one of the greatest Latin-American writers, but to validate a genre traditionally used as ancillary tool in the scholar reviews of Latin-American culture. The present article is intended to evaluate this writer's thoughts on Latin America from a cultural perspective, as it is revealed in the letters he exchanged with very important personalities of the XX Century, since his concerns on the destiny of this part of the world, ever-present in his literary work, also resound in many of his epistles. They are an irrefutable proof that America was to Carpentier a constant and intimal scenario of his worries and reflections.

Keywords : Alejo Carpentier; epistolary genre; Latin American culture; identity.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )