The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative

by Rolena Adorno

• ISBN13: 9780300120202
• ISBN10: 0300120206
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2008-01-09
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This book illuminates colonial Latin American literary studies in an entirely new way. Rolena Adorno argues that the incandescent nucleus of the Spanish American literary tradition consists of the writings in which the rights of Spanish dominion in the Americas were debated. She investigates the works of Spanish and Amerindian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shows how the narrative web they created had the capacity to reinvent itself, and explores how their literary legacy resonates even today. The book considers how canonical colonial-era writers engaged with issues of conquest and the treatment of Amerindians, situating the writings of Bartolome de las Casas at the heart of the discussion. Adorno traces the elaboration and persistence of colonial debates cast in narrative form to arrive at a new understanding of the "polemics of possession" and their crucial role in the history of Latin American literature and thought.

Author Biography

Rolena Adorno is Reuben Post Halleck Professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University. She is the author or editor of several books in the field of colonial Spanish American writing, among them her coauthored, award-winning Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of PÁnfilo de NarvÁez. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lives in Hamden, CT.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Overview: The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative	p. 1
Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and the Polemics of Possession	p. 21
Fray Bartolome de las Casas, Polemicist and Author	p. 61
Councilors Warring at the Royal Court	p. 99
Historians of War and Princely Warriors	p. 125
The Encomendero and His Literary Interlocutors	p. 148
The Conquistador-Chronicler and His Literary Authority	p. 172
The Amerindian, Studied, Interpreted, and Imagined	p. 191
The Narrative Invention of Gonzalo the Warrior	p. 220
The Narrative Reinvention of the Conqueror-Captive	p. 246
From Guancane to Macondo: Literary Places and Their Predecessors	p. 279
Seeing Ghosts: The Longevity of "Serpents in Sandals"	p. 308
Notes	p. 325
Bibliography	p. 383
Index	p. 415
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