Cuban Literature in the Age of Black Insurrection : Manzano, Plácido, and Afro-Latino Religion

"Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution. African religious knowledge subverted official Catholic dogma about redemptive suffering that might free the soul but leave the body enchained. Rather, Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido's antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow cultural progress. Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway's emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation"-- Provided by publisher "Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido) were perhaps the most important and innovative Cuban writers of African descent during the Spanish colonial era. Both nineteenth-century authors used Catholicism as a symbolic language for African-inspired spirituality. Likewise, Plácido and Manzano subverted the popular imagery of neoclassicism and Romanticism in order to envision black freedom in the tradition of the Haitian Revolution. African religious knowledge subverted official Catholic dogma about redemptive suffering that might free the soul but leave the body enchained. Rather, Plácido and Manzano envisioned emancipation through the lens of African spirituality, a transformative moment in the history of Cuban letters. Matthew Pettway examines how the portrayal of African ideas of spirit and cosmos in otherwise conventional texts recur throughout early Cuban literature and became the basis for Manzano and Plácido's antislavery philosophy. The portrayal of African-Atlantic religious ideas spurned the elite rationale that literature ought to be a barometer of highbrow cultural progress. Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway's emphasis on African-inspired spirituality as a source of knowledge and a means to sacred authority for black Cuban writers deepens our understanding of Manzano and Plácido not as mere imitators but as aesthetic and political pioneers. As Pettway suggests, black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognizing the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation"-- Provided by publisher Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Prefatory Note on Racial Terminology 14 One. The Introduction 18 Two. Católico a mi manera: Christianizing Juan Francisco Manzano 60 Three. Myth of the Christian Poet: The Death, Resurrection, and Redemption of Plácido 101 Four. Present but Unseen: African-Cuban Spirituality and Emancipation in the Literature of Juan Francisco Manzano 135 Five. Carnival, the Virgin, and the Saints: Reading the African-Cuban Spirit World in the Poetry of Plácido 189 Six. Black Cuban Literati in the Age of Revolution: Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés and Juan Francisco Manzano 249 Epilogue 286 Notes 298 Works Cited 312 About the Author 327