Simon Bolivar: Travels and Transformations of a Cultural Icon - Hardcover

9780813062624: Simon Bolivar: Travels and Transformations of a Cultural Icon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813062624 ISBN 13: 9780813062624

Publisher: University Press of Florida, 2016

One of Latin America’s most famous historical figures, Sim�n Bol�var has become a mythic symbol for many nations, empires, and revolutions used to support wildly diverse—sometimes opposite—ideas. From colonial Cuba to Nazi-occupied France to Cold War–era Slovenia, the image of “El Libertador” has variously signified loyalty, national unity, liberation, freedom, and revolt.

In this volume, an array of international and interdisciplinary scholars shows the ways Bol�var has appeared over the last two centuries in painting, fiction, poetry, music, film, festival, dance, city planning, and even reliquary adoration. They illustrate how Bol�var’s body has been exalted, reimagined, or fragmented in different contexts, taking on a range of meanings to represent the politics and poetics of today’s national bodies.

By critically analyzing many examples of cultural Bolivarianisms, or cults of Bol�var, this collection demonstrates the capacity of the arts and humanities to challenge and reinvent hegemonic icons and narratives and, therefore, to be vital to democracy.

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About the Author:

Maureen G. Shanahan is professor of art history at James Madison University.

Review:

“A valuable contribution to the field of Bolivarian studies. . . . Students and specialists alike will find useful the documentary evidence and analyses these essays provide.”―Revista de Estudios Hispanicos

“Shows us how and why Sim�n Bol�var is still a major icon in Latin American culture. Cinema, politics, painting, literature, religion, and opera are all touched and marked by ‘El Libertador’ who is still very much an active force in Latin America.”—Efra�n Barradas, author of Mente, Mirada, Mano: Visiones y Revisiones de La Obra de Lorenzo Homar

“An indispensable resource for anyone interested in the myth and memory of Sim�n Bol�var.”—Sibylle Fischer, author of Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution

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