The unique characteristics of Esteban Montejo and revolutionary spirit

Authors

  • Jongeun Yun Universidad Nacional de Seúl

Keywords:

Run away Slave, Cuban Revolution, Liberty, Masculine Identity, Representation

Abstract

The Autobiography of a Run Away Slave (1966) is considered as a model of the testimonial novel that Miguel Barnet proposed as a genre that represents the collective identity of the people. However, the narrator/character of the novel, Esteban Montejo, has unique characteristics that distinguish him from the people such as an individualistic inclination. In the prologue of the text, the author tries to identify those characteristics with the revolutionary spirit highlighting the fact that Montejo was a runaway slave who escaped from slavery and participated in the war of independence. Based on the assumption that the text focuses on representing the protagonist as a revolutionary model, this paper analyzes the uniqueness of narrator/character and the textual strategy that relate it to the Cuban Revolution.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Barnet, M. (1977). Biografía de un cimarrón. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina.

Barnet, M.. (2012). Biografía de un cimarrón. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho.

Barnet, M.. (1992). La novela testimonio: alquimia de la memoria. La Palabra y el Hombre 82, 75-78.

Beverley, J. (1987). Anatomía del testimonio. Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 8 (25), 7-16.

González Echevarría, R. (1980). Biografía de un cimarrón and the Novel of the Cuban Revolution. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 13 (3), 249-263.

Luis, W. (1989). The Politics of Memory and Miguel Barnet’s The Autobiography of a Run away Slave. MLN 104 (2), 475-491.

Puente, L. (2012). Creating Revolutionary Cuba’s National Hero: The Cultural Capital of the Cimarrón. Mester 41 (1), 27-48.

Segura-Rico, N. (1999). Biografía de un cimarrón and the Discourses of Slavery. Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica 49, 153-165.

Sklodowska, E. (2002). Miguel Barnet y la novela-testimonio. Revista Iberoamericana, 68 (200), 799-806.

Vera-León, A. (1989). Montejo, Barnet, el cimarronaje y la escritura de la historia. Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica 29, 3-16.

Downloads

Published

2026-03-25

How to Cite

Yun, J. (2026). The unique characteristics of Esteban Montejo and revolutionary spirit. Sincronía, 21(71), 188–207. Retrieved from https://revistasincronia.cucsh.udg.mx/index.php/sincronia/article/view/1109

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 71 (2017): January-June

Section

LETRAS

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Jongeun Yun

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

You are free to:

  1. Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  2. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
  3. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:

  1. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  2. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes .
  3. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.