French Literature Reviews - 2026

Bouffartigue, Sylvie (ed.), Fruits de la terre. Du produit exotique au symbole patriotique. Cuba XVIII-XXI.
Francophone and Oral Literatures

Fruits de la Terre. Du produit exotique au symbole patriotique. Cuba XVIII-XXI

Edited by Sylvie Bouffartigue

Paris: INDIGO, Côté-Femmes Editions, 2014.

EAN 9782352600979

312 p + central color insert

Bilingual edition. 24EUR

Publisher's overview:

This book originated from the allegory in Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, in which Fernando Ortiz cast Don Tobacco and Don Sugar as the central protagonists in the ballet of Cuban society. By personifying them, he characterized them from social, economic, and symbolic perspectives alike. "Coffee," he added, "foreign yet creolized, danced between the two." How could one resist joining the dance? Several contributors to this volume kept these figures in mind throughout their research. Restricting ourselves to these three colonial products—of which only tobacco is native—would have imposed an unproductive limitation. In the Hispanic Caribbean, and particularly in Cuba, literature and the arts are rich in fruit symbolism. This is why we have played upon the polysemy of the phrase, which evokes the island's endemic fruits, agricultural yields, as well as the fruits of thought and art, not to mention how the assimilation of the Earth to the Homeland allowed the metaphor of identity to be woven.

With contributions from S. Bouffartigue, S. Castillo, D. Diard, P. Estrade, L. Fernández Prieto, I. Garcia Abad, D. González Ripoll, S. Hernandez, J. Lamore, S. Lamrani, R-C Lucien, S. Mégevand, F. Moulin-Civil, M. Moreau, C. Naranjo Orovio, J. Opatrný, M.E. Orozco-Lamore, and V. Sanz.

Readers interested in Caribbean cultural history and the intersections of literature, society, and identity may find this bilingual collection relevant. Edited by Sylvie Bouffartigue and published in Paris in 2014, the volume brings together numerous researchers including S. Bouffartigue, S. Castillo, D. Diard, P. Estrade, L. Fernández Prieto, I. Garcia Abad, D. González Ripoll, S. Hernandez, J. Lamore, S. Lamrani, R-C Lucien, S. Mégevand, F. Moulin-Civil, M. Moreau, C. Naranjo Orovio, J. Opatrný, M.E. Orozco-Lamore, and V. Sanz to analyze representations spanning from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century.