SOURCE: Luis, William. “Textual Multiplications: Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía and Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés.” In Literary Bondage: Slavery in Cuban Narrative, pp. 82-119. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Luis discusses the three different versions of Cecilia Valdés: the two-part story published in La Siempreviva, the 1839 novel published in Cuba, and the 1882 version published in New York.

Cecilia Valdés is the most important novel written in nineteenth-century Cuba and perhaps one of the most significant works published in Latin America during the same period. Elías Entralgo states: “Cecilia Valdés is our most representative literary myth. For Cuban literature, it is the equivalent of what the Quijote is for the Spanish, Hamlet for the English or Faust for the German literatures.”⁴

In a comparative reading, I will analyze the three versions of Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés and show that even...