Puritan Conquistadors

by Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge

• ISBN13: 9780804742801
• ISBN10: 0804742804
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-03
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

This book argues that the striking resemblances in Spanish and Puritan discourses of colonization as "exorcism" and as spiritual gardening point to a common Atlantic history. These resemblances suggest that we are better off if we simply consider the Puritan colonization of New England as a continuation of Iberian models rather than a radically different colonizing experience. The book demonstrates that a wider Pan-American perspective can upset the most cherished national narratives of the United States, for it maintains that the Puritan colonization of New England was as much a chivalric, crusading act ofReconquista(against the Devil) as was the Spanish conquest.

Author Biography

Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is author of the award winning How to Write the History of the New World (Stanford University Press, 2001).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(34)
The Satanic Epic	35	(48)
The Iberian Satanic Epic	39	(11)
The Satanic Epic in the Catholic Atlantic	50	(4)
The Elizabethan Satanic Epic	54	(14)
The Puritan Satanic Epic in America	68	(3)
The Spanish Conquest as Hell	71	(5)
Our ``Elizabethan'' Lady of Guadalupe	76	(4)
Iberian Traditions in Milton's Paradise Lost	80	(1)
Conclusions	81	(2)
The Structure of a Shared Demonological Discourse	83	(37)
Satan's Tyranny	84	(4)
Cannibalism	88	(7)
Collective Harassment and Amerindian Emasculation	95	(2)
The Geographical Mobility of Demons: The Geopolitics of Evil	97	(3)
Satan: God's Ape in America	100	(4)
Satan and Typology: The Aztecs' History as the Inverted Mirror Image of the Israelites'	104	(6)
Driving out Demons with the Cross	110	(5)
Anglican Crosses/Puritan Bibles	115	(3)
Conclusions	118	(2)
Demonology and Nature	120	(58)
The Tempest	121	(2)
Storms	123	(3)
Plants	126	(6)
Monsters	132	(4)
Satanic Snakes	136	(5)
Catholic Providence in Nature	141	(11)
Protestant Providence in Nature	152	(3)
America as False Paradise	155	(21)
Conclusions	176	(2)
Colonization as Spiritual Gardening	178	(37)
Gardening as Type and Metaphor	179	(7)
Flowers and Patriotic Anxieties in Spanish America	186	(19)
Puritan ``Plantations''	205	(9)
Conclusions	214	(1)
Toward a ``Pan-American'' Atlantic	215	(20)
Bolton's Legacy	216	(2)
The National and the Global	218	(2)
The Comparative and the Transnational	220	(1)
Sudden Divergence	221	(2)
Could Spanish America Ever Be Normative?	223	(1)
The Exclusionary Force of the Narrative of ``Western Civilization''	224	(2)
Historiographical Barricades	226	(1)
Ideas . . . Where?	227	(3)
Should Latin Americans Embrace the Atlantic?	230	(1)
Away from Tragic Narratives	231	(4)
Notes	235	(54)
Select Bibliography	289	(30)
Index	319