Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Hero, Lover, Demon, Fool: Fictional Appropriations of Che Guevara

Rowlandson, William (2011) Hero, Lover, Demon, Fool: Fictional Appropriations of Che Guevara. Journal of Romance Studies, 11 (2). pp. 61-74. ISSN 1473-3536. (doi:10.3167/jrs.2011.110204) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:30317)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/jrs.2011.110204

Abstract

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, visiting Cuba in 1960, met Ernesto Guevara and were struck by his personal and political presence. Sartre praised Guevara as the embodiment of existential freedom, referring to his ability to be led by his own assertive will, and not by the will of others, and allegedly described him as 'the most complete human being of our age' (Anderson 1997a: 468). From the time of his death until the present, Guevara has been cast in a wide array of historical reconstructions with varying degrees of fictional distance from biographical historicity. In particular, he has repeatedly appeared as a fictional character in novels, sometimes showing an alarming degree of poetic licence, betraying strong ideological motivations behind the fiction. This article analyses the ironic relationship between Jean-Paul Sartre's praise of Guevara as someone who has fully embraced the freedom of being and the fictionalization or categorization of Guevara as a novelistic character.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.3167/jrs.2011.110204
Uncontrolled keywords: CUBA; CHE GUEVARA; NOVELS; FICTIONAL REPRESENTATION; MYTH; IMAGE; JEANPAUL SARTRE; SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR; IDEOLOGY
Subjects: F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F1201 Latin America (General)
P Language and Literature > PQ Romance Literature > PQ6001 Spanish Literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Fiona Symes
Date Deposited: 28 Aug 2012 16:07 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:08 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/30317 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.