Download or read book Cecilia Vald s or El Angel Hill written by Cirilo Villaverde and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-09-29 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in New York City in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime. For the contemporary reader Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.

Download or read book The Spanish American Reader written by Ernesto Nelson and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Vienna and Versailles written by Jeroen Frans Jozef Duindam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-14 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings vividly to life the courtiers and servants of the imperial court in Vienna and the royal court at Paris-Versailles. Drawing on a wealth of material masterfully set in a comparative context, the book makes a unique contribution to the field of court studies. Staff, numbers, costs and hierarchies; daily routines and ceremonies; court favourites and the nature of rulership; the integrative and centripetal forces of the central courtly establishment: all are seen in a long-term, comparative perspective that highlights both the similarities and the distinctiveness of developments in France and the Habsburg lands. In the process, most conventional views of each court - and of court life in general - are challenged, and an alternative interpretation emerges. Finally, by relocating the household in the heart of the early modern state, Vienna and Versailles forces us to rethink the process of statebuilding and the notion of 'absolutism'.

Download or read book Princes Patronage and the Nobility written by Ronald G. Asch and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a comparative perspective, this volume studies the court as a crucial center of government and politics, as well as the dominant focus for the ruling elites. The essays explore how the early modern court gradually developed from the medieval royal household to its very different form in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Comparing England, Germany, France, Spain as well as the Netherlands and Italy, the editors find that several common themes emerge: the problem of integrating a number of often vastly different provinces and principalities through the attraction of a court; the capital city's function as the basis of the court and as its rival; the role of the Court during the great religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the court as an instrument for domesticating the nobility and a stronghold of aristocratic influence.

Download or read book The Princely Courts of Europe written by John Adamson and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, European courts were the single most influential institutions anywhere. This guide shows how they functioned, how they interrelated, and why they were Europe's main cultural centres.

Download or read book Our America written by Waldo David Frank and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: