IN: Frances Burney (13 June 1752 - 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and after her marriage as Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King's Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to the musician and music historian Dr Charles Burney (1726-1814) and his first wife, Esther Sleepe Burney (1725-1762). The third of her mother's six children, she was self-educated and began writing what she called her "scribblings" at the age of ten. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre D'Arblay.

Frances was the third child in a family of six. Her elder siblings were Esther (Hetty) (1749-1832) and James (1750-1821), the younger Susanna Elizabeth (1755-1800), Charles (1757-1817) and Charlotte Ann (1761-1838). Of her brothers, James became an admiral and sailed with Captain James Cook on his second and third voyages. The younger Charles Burney became a well-known classical scholar and the namesake of The Burney Collection of Newspapers. Her younger sister, Susanna, married in 1781 Molesworth Phillips, an officer in the Royal Marines who had sailed in Captain Cook's last expedition; she left a journal that is a principal eye-witness account of the Gordon Riots. Her younger half-sister, Sarah Harriet Burney (1772-1844), also became a novelist, publishing seven works of fiction of her own. Esther Sleepe Burney also bore two other boys, both named Charles, who died in infancy in 1752 and 1754.  Frances Burney began composing small letters and stories almost as soon as she learned the alphabet. She also could be found often with her brothers and sisters creating plays; both writing and acting them. The Burney family had many close friends, one of whom was a writer called Samuel Crisp, nicknamed "Daddy Crisp". He was almost like a second father to Frances, and was a strong influence on her early years of writing. Burney scholar Margaret Anne Doody has investigated conflicts within the Burney family that affected Burney's writing and her personal life. Doody alleged that one strain was an incestuous relationship between her brother James and their half-sister Sarah in 1798-1803, but there is no direct evidence for this and it is hard to square with Frances's affection and financial assistance to Sarah in later life.  Frances Burney's mother, described by historians as a woman of "warmth and intelligence", was the daughter of a French refugee named Dubois and had been brought up a Catholic. This French heritage influenced Frances Burney's self-perception in later life, possibly contributing to her attraction and subsequent marriage to Alexandre D'Arblay. Esther Burney died in 1762 when Frances was ten years old, a loss which she felt throughout her life.  Frances's father, Charles Burney, was noted for his personal charm, and even more for his talents as a musician, a musicologist, a composer and a man of letters. In 1760 he moved his family to London, a decision that improved their access to the cultured elements of English society, and as a consequence their own social standing. They lived in the midst of an artistically inclined social circle that gathered round Charles at their home in Poland Street, Soho.  In 1767 Charles Burney eloped to marry for a second time, to Elizabeth Allen, the wealthy widow of a King's Lynn wine merchant. Allen had three children of her own, and several years after the marriage the two families merged into one. This new domestic situation was unfortunately fraught with tension. The Burney children found their new stepmother overbearing and quick to anger, and they took refuge from the situation by making fun of the woman behind her back. However, their collective unhappiness served in some respects to bring them closer to one another. In 1774 the family moved again to what had been the house of Isaac Newton in St Martin's Street, Westminster, London.

Why were Frances and her siblings upset about this marriage?

OUT: This new domestic situation was unfortunately fraught with tension.


IN: Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (December 26, 1904 - April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba, and despite his European birthplace, he strongly self-identified as Cuban throughout his life. He traveled extensively, particularly in France, and to South America and Mexico, where he met prominent members of the Latin American cultural and artistic community. Carpentier took a keen interest in Latin American politics and often aligned himself with revolutionary movements, such as Fidel Castro's Communist Revolution in Cuba in the mid-20th century.

The Baroque style dates back to the cultural period of the 17th and early 18th centuries. It is most often defined as "the dominant style of art in Europe between the Mannerist and Rococo eras, a style characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric". Carpentier first became fascinated with this style in architecture and sculpture; however, he later describes el barroco as un espiritu, and not un estilo historico ("a spirit, not an historical style"). Wakefield insists that this attitude towards the Baroque stemmed from Carpentier's background in both Europe and Latin America which allowed him to take on a superior front in the face of post-colonialism and ultimately have the literary upper-hand where he could use European style to tell the Latin American story. Carpentier developed his vision of the baroque in his early works before he described himself as a baroque writer. He experimented with the technique in several developmental stages: "first as a cultural style of aesthetic fascination, later as a literary device to create period ambiance, and finally as a weapon of postcolonial pride, defiance and one-upmanship".  This style strongly presents itself when comparing works such as the early Ecue-Yamba-O to the celebrated El reino de este mundo, regarding Carpentier's use of more historically eloquent vocabulary in the latter, instead of the authentic language of the ethnically-inspired characters. Here he escapes the stereotype of "nativism" by incorporating European standards, but continues to achieve a sense of normalcy without the expected use of the colloquialisms which the protagonist Ti Noel would undoubtedly use.  Kaup claims that Carpentier utilizes what is known as the "New World Baroque", since Latin America didn't come into contact with the Enlightenment or "European modernity". This contraconquista (counter conquest) allows the New World authors to experiment with new identities and the manners of expressing them. As such, Carpentier observed in his 1975 essay that "American Baroque develop[ed] along with criollo culture ...: the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo; and the criollo spirit is itself a Baroque spirit." This criollo of the New World Baroque is often seen as the dominant style of European literature emerging as a subordinate literary construction in Latin America.

Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

OUT:
Kaup claims that Carpentier utilizes what is known as the "New World Baroque", since Latin America didn't come into contact with the Enlightenment or "European modernity".