Adapting Cecilia, Cuba's Iconic Mulatta

This project explores the expanding corpus of texts and artifacts inspired by Cirilo Villaverde's most well-known literary character, Cecilia Valdés. Drawing on adaptation studies and related transmedia approaches, the book examines how and why this iconographic complex, centered on the mytheme of a disaffected mulatta striving for a better life, has generated such a remarkably persistent proliferation of multi-media instantiations. Chapters address topics and themes central to the interests of Villaverde scholars as well as to Cubanists and Latin Americanists, more broadly, such as gender and sexual roles, race and hybridity, cultural and national identity, and, in general, colonial and post-colonial social contexts in Cuba.

List of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction Cubas Cecilia Valdes Transmedia Archetype Icon and Muse.- Chapter 2: La Primitiva Cecilias Enlightenment Origins.- Chapter 3: Costumbrismo and Carnival in Tomo Primero.- Chapter 4: Core Text of the Cecilia Constellation Villaverdes 1882 Novel.- Chapter 5: Moruas Corrective Narratives Sofia and La familia Unzuazu.- Chapter 6: Cecilia Onstage.- Chapter 7: Cecilia On Screen.- Chapter 8: Anarchic Parody Arenass La loma del Angel.- Chapter 9: Conclusion.

About the author

Lucy Harney is Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages & Literatures at Texas State University, USA. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin. Her primary research interests and publications focus on nineteenth and twentieth-century fiction, musical theater, and cultural studies in Spain and Latin America. She studies modes such as costumbrismo, carnival, and urban pastoral in various music theater forms including Spanish género chico, sainete, and tonadilla escénica, as well as in Spanish and Cuban zarzuela.

Product details

• Authors: Lucy Harney
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 10.11.2025
• EAN: 9783031976766
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3197676-6
• No. of pages: 252
• Illustrations: XI, 252 p. 5 illus., 4 illus. in color.
• Series: New Caribbean Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Amerika, Darstellende Künste, Kulturwissenschaften, Süd- und Zentralamerika (inklusive Mexiko), Lateinamerika, Literaturwissenschaft: 1800 bis 1900, National Identity, Novel, Transmedia, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Latin American Culture, Latin American/Caribbean Literature, Adaptation Studies, Literature and Postcolonial Studies, Literature, Gender and Sexuality, Literature and Race, Hispanism, Cuban Literature, Cirilo Villaverde