America's literary imagination in the way of Santiago by Alejo Carpentier

Abstract

In this study we aim to understand some aspects of the America's literary imagination present in Alejo Carpentier's tale The Way of Santiago, published in the book War of time (1958). An analysis of the poetic structure of the text, associated with Carpentier's critical essays on Latin American literature in the twentieth century, allows us to see that the historical imagination of America presented by the author intertwines past and present, Old and New World, with emphasis on the perception of a stratified historical space-time stands out, since the main character transits between different continents and cultural universes, simultaneously as “Renaissance Man” and “American Baroque Man”. This complex relationship between times, spaces, conceptions and cultural practices, beyond the sense of historical-temporal linearity, reframes the notions of progress and revolution and points to a perception of Latin America as a problematic locus of civilization,