Annotated Bibliography edit
De Armas, Frederick A. “Metamorphosis as Revolt: Cervantes’ Persiles y Sigismunda and Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo.” Hispanic Review 49.3 (1981): 297-316.
Goldberg, Florinda F. “Patterns of Repetition in “The Kingdom of this World”.” Latin American Literary Review 19.2 (1991): 23-34.
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth. “The Haitian Revolution in Interstices and Shadows: A Re-reading of Alejo Carpentier’s “The Kingdom of this World”.” Research in African Literatures 35.2 (2004): 114-127.
Pontiero, Giovanni. ““The Human Comedy” in El Reino de Este Mundo.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 12.4 (1970): 528-538.
Sokoloff, Naomi B. “The Discourse of Contradiction: Metaphor, Metonymy and “El reino de este mundo”.” Modern Language Studies 16.2 (1986): 39-53.
Vélez-Sainz, Julio. “El cuerpo político: Carnaval, corporeidad y revolución en El reino de este mundo de Alejo Carpentier.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 31.2 (2005): 181-193.
1. Metamorphosis as Revolt: Cervantes’ Persiles y Sigismunda and Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo by Frederick A. de Armas
The article begins by highlighting Carpentier’s admiration for Cervantes, and his specific mention of the character of Rutilo in the prologue to the novel. De Armas continues by describing lo real maravilloso and how it stems from the very belief in it. The marvellous, according to de Armas, “appears to be associated with a shift in point of view from the omniscient narrator to a character who believes in such occurrences”.
Both Cervantes and Carpentier situate marvellous occurrences in exotic lands, whose culture is alien to Western Europeans. It is further argued that “the marvellous environment is of demonic origin in both works”, with their execution being impacted by the authors’ differing ideologies: while Cervantes has his characters flee to Christian lands, Carpentier praises the Haitian struggle against the Europeans. Finally, it is stated that “metamorphosis and transvection are simply the weapons used to fight”, which is what Ti Noel discovers at the end: metamorphosis is a tool to battle injustice, not flee it.
2. Patterns of Repetition in “The Kingdom of this World” by Florinda F. Goldberg
The article argues that Carpentier’s conception of history based on repetition follows a pattern of intratextual repetition. This pattern is analyzed in six different motifs: order and disorder, power and powerlessness; voyage and exile; nature versus establishment; constructions and ruins; the sculpture; the drum and the thunder. Furthermore, three culminating episodes are named, in which the motifs above cluster: the death of Henri Christophe, the death of Soliman, and the death of Ti Noel.
Goldberg states that there is a cycle of order and disorder; order contains many internal disruptive components, such as injustice, as well as external disruptive components, or disorder. Disorder may succeed long enough to produce a new order, however, the exact same pattern is repeated but with different actors: “Power changes hands, but its rules are the same”. Another cycle is proposed: one of voyage, where all characters long to return to their original land. These voyages are representative of different kinds of passages: from freedom to slavery, from death to survival, etc. The third motif states that nature becomes an ally of the slaves, and has just as much power as human violence to defeat the Europeans. Goldberg notes that buildings represent European enterprise, while their ruins symbolize their failure: however, a building can be its own ruin, while a ruin can become a home. The motif of the statue is “in a wider sense, the relation between the living body and its artificial/artistic representation”. The final motif places the drum as “the central material component of the African Voodoo culture”, which becomes all the more powerful due to the whites’ ignorance of it.
3. The Haitian Revolution in Interstices and Shadows: A Re-reading of Alejo Carpentier’s “The Kingdom of This World” by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
Paravisini-Gebert begins by stating that when Carpentier wrote the The Kingdom of this World he had “joined a widespread movement whose purpose was ‘a search for origins, the recovery of history and tradition, the foundation of an autonomous American consciousness serving as the basis for a literature faithful to the New World’.” She further observes that the connection between history and magical faith was of great interest to Carpentier, since it represented the very opposite of Western beliefs.
The article highlights the relation between the novel and other texts, which Carpentier alludes to in his prologue. A number of works which influenced him are listed, such as “Le torrent” by Dominique Hypollyte and “The Magic Island” by William Seabrook. Further, the author claims that historical fact in the novel is manipulated in order to achieve the connection between history and the marvellous. Finally, Carpentier’s treatment of certain historical figures is analyzed, including Toussaint, Dessalines, and Pauline.
4. “The Human Comedy” in “El Reino de Este Mundo” by Giovanni Pontiero
The author defines three main strands of narrative in the novel. The first includes the history of Haiti: the abolition of slavery, the uprising, Henri Christophe’s reign, etc. The second strand deals with “the spirit and culture of eighteenth-century France transplanted to a prosperous Haiti”. The final narrative thread concerns the role of voodoo in the colony.
The article tackles each of these strands in turn, analyzing them in terms of their contribution to the human comedy in the book. Pontiero highlights Carpentier’s “juxtaposition of historical and fictional material works”, and analyzes his choice of what to focus on. Furthermore, he notes how “Carpentier never fails to stress the irony of human destinies”, by portraying history as nothing more than an endless cycle with different protagonists at different points in time. Pontiero posits that Carpentier was highly influenced by satirical writing of the eighteenth-century, as evidenced by the irony in his grotesque and malicious descriptions of the French. In regards to voodoo, the article stresses “a firm belief in the unalterable laws of Man’s condition”.
5. The Discourse of Contradiction: Metaphor, Metonymy and “El reino de este mundo” by Naomi B. Sokoloff
Sokoloff identifies a series of patterns in the novel: the unconventional retelling of history, with gaps in time and changing perspectives; the perception of history as cyclic; the juxtaposition of fact and fiction. His “experiment with nonlinear organization … corresponds to a major, contrary shift in his prose, away for metaphor and toward metonymy”. It is argued that metonymy helps to preserve links of cause and effect and allows the author to restrict his field of reference to that which can be understood by his audience.
Metaphor, however, is still used and is an important source of irony and humour. Metaphor and metonymy complement each other in the novel, since the former synthesizes new meaning, creating some inconsistencies, while the latter assumes previous knowledge and reduces incompatibilities. Metonymy serves some the purposes of defamiliarizing situations through its elliptical qualities. It is also used to dehumanize characters and emphasize the larger group to which they belong.
The use of such tropes increases the irony in the work, as they help to characterize people as immutable and constantly repeating history. Furthermore, they serve to juxtapose contradicting beliefs, such as voodoo and Christianity, which help to explain the irony in the very title of the novel.
6. El cuerpo político: Carnaval, corporeidad y revolución en El reino de este mundo de Alejo Carpentier by Julio Vélez-Sainz
Vélez-Sainz argues that Carpentier uses the political body metaphor along with carnival to compose the cycles of changing power in his novel. The metaphor of the political body works by synecdoche, in which members of the social body are identified by the body part which characterizes them: the head of state directs the body, the mouth represents public speakers, and workers are symbolized by the hands, due to their work, or the feet, since they keep the body up. The political body, which stands for the governing power, deteriorates as power is lost. Revolution is characterized by mutilation, poisoning and disembodiment.
Carnival, however, serves as another form of revolution. Carnival is the time where opposites reign, which becomes quite literally the case in Carpentier’s book: the blacks take over, and then in another twist, the blacks begin mistreating each other. Elements of carnival are also represented: costumes are substituted by metamorphoses. Further, the carnivalesque tradition of mocking the king is present when Ti Noel becomes a sort of king in his own pseudo-kingdom. --Chris Weber (talk) 01:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)