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Abstract:
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My purpose in writing this dissertation is to re -evaluate the works of three influential Spanish -Caribbean authors who seem to be remembered more as exceptional historical characters rather than for their literature itself . Although often considered to be important contributors to the Spanish -Caribbean literary canon , these writers have also suffered a measure of marginalization as scholars have relegated them to the status of discursive subjects rather than evaluate them as authorial agents . As a consequence , the majority of their works have not been fully recognized as important factors in nineteenth , twentieth , and twenty first century literary production . I show how in their writings – many of which have been misunderstood , under -evaluated , and /or forgotten altogether – these writers narrated their own precarious situations and lifted their voice in protest against slavery , racism and economic oppression at a time when the dominant discourses and heavy -handed controls of the Spanish colonial government strictly forbid them to do so .
These authors are Juan Francisco Manzano , Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés (Plácido ) and Eleuterio Derkes . Because these authors lived in Cuba (Manzano and Plácido ) and Puerto Rico (Derkes ) as colonial subjects underneath the oppressive structures of their respective plantation and hacienda economies based on sugar production and slave labor , they experienced difficult colonial conditions and as such are able to narrate this life through a unique perspective that other writers associated with the dominant discourses of the time could not . While these brands of hegemony were indeed forced upon them as writers and artists , it did not stop them from narrating and communicating their unique Spanish Caribbean perspective . I show how these authors , as marginalized figures of nineteenth century plantation society , engineered their own discourses around these hegemonic institutions – writing between the lines of hegemony and concurrent with it at the same time – in order to create an alternative image of nineteenth century Spanish Caribbean society that requires further critical consideration and perspective . |