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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Madeleine Dobie, Mads Anders Baggesgaard and Karen-Margrethe Simonsen
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVI] 2024
► pp. 295–312

Chapter 16
Fear and love in Matanzas

Emotional extremis in the works of Juan Franciso Manzano

Many of the most gripping scenes in the first-person account of life under slavery by the 19th century Cuban poet Juan Francisco Manzano reference pleasures and punishments involving the exercise of the emotions. His works in both narrative and verse strikingly foreground emotional duress as a central and lasting product of the psychosocial and physical abuse that characterized enslavement. Denied the free expression of his own senses and emotions, his autobiographical protagonist is at the same time subject to the degraded sensory indulgences of overseers and others who force him to participate in acts that perpetuate his own harm. In the dramatic representation of these traumatic episodes, Manzano notes how his natural liveliness, bonhomie and even affection for those around him were gradually replaced by overwhelming melancholy and foreboding.
Keywords: Cuba, poetry, autobiography, romanticism, rationality, melancholy, somaesthetics
Article outline
  • The battlefield of the senses
  • Trembling, salutation and surprise
  • A garden of happiness
  • Certain states of depression, incurable to this day
  • From lamb to lion
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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References (32)
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