This book gives a new interpretation of the reception of the new world by the old. It is the first in-depth study of the pre-Enlightenment methods by which Europeans attempted to describe and classify the American Indian and his society. Between 1512 and 1724 a simple determinist view of human society was replaced by a more sophisticated relativist approach. Anthony Pagden uses new methods of technical analysis, already developed in philosophy and anthropology, to examine four groups of writers who analysed Indian culture: the sixteenth-century theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, and his followers; the 'champion of the Indians' Bartolomé de Las Casas; and the Jesuit historians José de Acosta and Joseph François Lafitau. Dr Pagden explains the sources for their theories and how these conditioned their observations. He also examines for the first time the key terms in each writer's vocabulary - words such as 'barbarian' and 'civil' - and the assumptions that lay beneath them.
The Frenchman Juan de Grimaldi was instrumental in the development of the Spanish theatre in the 1820s and 30s, at a time when censorship, repression, and economic chaos had left it in a state of stagnation. As impresario and stage director, he trained actors in the new style of declamation, made physical changes in sets and lighting, translated recent French plays into Spanish, and encouraged the writing of original Spanish plays. His own magical comedy, La Pata de Cabra (1829), was outstandingly successful. Grimaldi was also a wealthy businessman and newspaper editor, and the patron of many important Spanish Romantic writers. He was active in politics, vigorously defending the moderate policies of the Queen Regent, María Cristina, and of Prime Minister Ramón de Nerváez. Even after his return to Paris, Grimaldi continued to work secretly as an agent of the Spanish government. Based on original archival materials, this is the first in-depth study of Grimaldi's involvement in the
Myth and Archive offers a new theory about the origin and evolution of the Latin American narrative, and about the emergence of the modern novel. Instead of following the traditional categories set up
Originally published in 1988, this book offers an important insight into the so-called 'martyrdom movement' that occurred in Córdoba in the 850s. It includes a biographical treatment of the ninth-century Cordoban priest Eulogius, who witnessed and recorded the martyrdoms of over forty Christians at the hands of Muslim authorities. Eulogius' hagiographical task was complicated by the fact that many of the Christians in Córdoba at the time resented the provocative actions of the martyrs that led to their executions, claiming that their public denunciations of Islam were inappropriate given the relative tolerance of the emir. This book will be of value to scholars and others with an interest in the history of Muslim Spain, the history of Muslim–Christian interaction, and historical ideas of sanctity.
The Comentarios reales de los incas, a classic of Spanish Renaissance prose narrative, was written by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. It is full of ideological tensions and apparent contradictions as Garcilaso attempts to reconcile a pagan new-world culture with the fervent Christian evangelism of the period of the discovery and conquest of America. This study of the Comentarios is original both in adopting the perspective of discourse analysis and in its interdisciplinary approach. Margarita Zamora examines the rhetorical complexities of the Comentarios, and shows how, in order to present Inca civilization to Europeans, Garcilaso turned to disciplines other than traditional historiography, and in particular to the linguistic strategies of humanist philology and hermeneutics. Professor Zamora reveals how Garcilaso's views of the Incas were shaped by the dual nature of his background, by his commitment to humanism and Christianity, by
This is the first thorough study of Calderón in comparison with other important dramatists of the period: Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina in Spain, Racine and Corneille in France, and Shakespeare and Marlowe in England. Cascardi studies Calderón's paradoxical engagement with illusion in its philosophical guise as scepticism. He shows on the one hand Calderón's moral will to reject illusion and on the other his theatrical need to embrace it. Cascardi discusses plays from every period to show how in Calderón's best work illusion is not rejected; instead, scepticism is absorbed. Calderón is placed in and defined against the philosophical line of Vives, Descartes, and Spinoza. Of central importance to this argument is Calderón's idea of theatre and the various transformations of that idea. This emphasis will give the book an additional interest to students, readers in philosophy and comparative literature.
In June 1810, the Venezuelans, fearful of French aggression, sent a diplomatic mission to London in search of an ally. The mission was headed by Símon Bolívar; the secretary was Andres Bello. Bello re
This book describes the history of peasants in Catalonia, the wealthiest and politically dominant part of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon, between the ninth and fifteenth centuries. It focuses on the p
This volume of essays constitutes a critical reappraisal of a front-rank world author, Gabriel García Márquez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Apart from extending critical appreciation of his work to an English-reading public, its principal objective is to reflect the breadth and variety of critical approaches to literature applied to a single corpus of writing; here, the major novels (including Love in the Times of Cholera, 1986) and a selection of his short fiction are considered. The aim of this collection, given these dual objectives, is to extend knowledge of the work of García Márquez and introduce to both the general reader and to students of literature a plurality of current critical approaches to his rich variety of fictional techniques. The volume also includes a bibliography of criticism available in English and an English translation of the author's Stockholm Nobel acceptance address.
Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974) is one of the notable literary figures in Latin America who in the 1920s contrived both to explore and define Latin literature within the mainstream of Western histor
The articles gathered within this 1998 book address the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar's oeuvre from a variety of critical positions and focus on several of his multifarious writings: poems, short stories, novels, and miscellanea. The intention has been to provide the space for a reappraisal of Cortázar that will question received notions and assumptions regarding his works, and hence pave the way for an overarching revision of his production and his place in Latin American literature. Although significantly different in their theoretical approach, style, and their point of insertion in Cortázar's oeuvre, the articles provide a radical reassessment of one of the most significant Latin American writers.
