Latin American Literature Commons^™

Foundational Frustrations: Incest And Incompletion In Cirilo Villaverde's Cecilia Valdés, Thomas Genova

Spanish Publications

This article explores the evolution of author Cirilo Villaverde’s racial republican thinking as it develops through the three Cecilia Valdés texts. Contending that—precisely because the incest trope is absent from the 1839 works—an examination of the two earlier versions of the story can shed light on the troubling place of consanguinity in the 1882 novel, I consider the three Cecilia texts in light of the genre that theorist Doris Sommer terms “foundational romances,” or, works in which marriage between members of opposing factions in the national body acts as an allegory for national consolidation. After situating Villaverde in the context …