ABSTRACT
Since its origin in Greek culture, cosmopolitanism has been a highly disputed concept. Critics holding on to identity politics that take the nation-state as their reference point dismiss it as an escapist outlook. Besides examples from literature in the Americas, this entry focuses on music as a medium especially able to represent cosmopolitan values, because music can be enjoyed across the otherwise strict divisions of different languages and customs. Today, a renewed interest in redefining “world literature” as global, cosmopolitan, and transnational has been debated vigorously by scholars in Comparative Literature, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and American Literature. Music is often considered intrinsically mobile, capable of crossing linguistic, cultural, and geopolitical borders with much greater ease than other expressive media. Loaded with ironic allusions to the classical and European literary and musical traditions, Los Pasos Perdidos is also an effort to shake free of these traditions, in which Carpentier himself was so well-educated.
