Alejo Carpentier, a cross-cultural author. The case of "El reino de este mundo"

Abstract

The Cuban Alejo Carpentier is a cross-cultural author, writing between cultures. He takes European literary strategies in order to accomplish his aim: to depict the Latin American essence as no one had done before. To do so, he develops new instruments: the marvelous real and the neobarroque. In this article, we will consider Carpentier’s transcultural strategies and, from this point of view, his representation of Latin America in the novel El reino de este mundo (The kingdom of this world). The novel presents the subcontinent as a transcultural product, and there is a group of characters who already represent the new world: Monsieur Lenormand de Mezy, Paulina and Henri Christophe. Mackandal, on the other hand, embodies the marvelous real, a strategy that is in itself a transcultural product.