The Conquest of Mexico in the Nineteenth-Century Transamerican Novel
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Copyright by Dustin Kenneth Hixenbaugh 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Dustin Kenneth Hixenbaugh Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Conquest of Mexico in the Nineteenth-Century Transamerican Novel Committee: César Salgado, Co-Supervisor John Morán González, Co-Supervisor Phillip Barrish Naomi Lindstrom Gretchen Murphy The Conquest of Mexico in the Nineteenth-Century Transamerican Novel by Dustin Kenneth Hixenbaugh, B.A. English; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2016 Acknowledgements I have many people to thank for inspiring me to begin this project and supporting me as I have completed it. This formidable list includes my parents, Kenneth and Diana Hixenbaugh, my grand uncle, Warren Ilchman, and of course my husband, Sean Malley, not to mention the many other family members and friends who have encouraged me during my time in graduate school. In particular, I want to thank Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Roanne Kantor, Julianna Leachman, and Stephanie Malak for volunteering sage writing advice and for helping me articulate my ideas over hundreds of cups of coffee. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the members of the University of Texas faculty who have seen this dissertation through. As co-supervisors of the project, César Salgado and John Morán González have been exceedingly generous with their time and feedback, and I have relied heavily on their counsel as I have transformed the project from conference presentations and scraps of paper into the (somewhat) more coherent current document. I am also indebted to the other members of the committee, Phillip Barrish, Naomi Lindstrom, and Gretchen Murphy, who have shaped my understanding of nineteenth-century literature through their research and mentorship, as well as to Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Mark Longaker, and Sônia Roncador, who have helped me find and feel confident in my voice as an educator and a scholar of literature. Lastly, I want to thank E. Cram, Jacob and Sarah Hollinger, Chris and Elizabeth Maine, and Chris and Felicia Sears for opening their homes to me as I conducted archival research and presented drafts of these chapters at academic conferences. iv The Conquest of Mexico in the Nineteenth-Century Transamerican Novel Dustin Kenneth Hixenbaugh, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Co-supervisors: César Salgado and John Morán González Over the course of the nineteenth century, writers raised in the New World produced at least twenty historical novels about the Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521), making it one of the topics and time periods most frequently evoked in the era’s literature. The oldest of these novels, Jicoténcal (1826), has interested scholars of transamerican literary relations for its plea for hemispheric unity in the face of Spanish imperialism. However, the other novels, despite their popularity with contemporary readers, have tended to be dismissed by modern critics as distractions for women and children and poor imitations of the historical novels of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper. This dissertation, which includes chapters on literary texts by the Cuban author Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (Guatimozín; 1846), the US American author Lew Wallace (The Fair God; 1873), and the Mexican author Ireneo Paz (Amor y suplicio; 1873), repositions the Conquest novel as a work of socially engaged literature that is meant to be consumed during the reader’s leisure hours but is nonetheless interested in shaping the reader’s political actions. Drawing on archival materials such as the authors’ letters, journalism, and unpublished speeches, as well as the work of scholars like Doris Sommer, Roberto González Echevarría, and Gretchen Murphy, the dissertation reveals that the writers of Conquest novels manipulated the story of Spain’s subjugation of the Aztec Empire to intervene in contemporary debates over imperialism, republicanism, and regional/national identity. Together, these texts chronicle Americans’ shifting perceptions of the relations between the New and Old Worlds and between the creoles, Indians, and mestizos who share the western hemisphere. When approached as a unique discursive formation, Conquest novels challenge the boundaries between nations, genres, and disciplines that have tended to constrict scholarship on nineteenth-century literature. They expose some of the ways that authors have used stories about the past to reflect on the present and guide the future. v Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 Nineteenth-Century Conquest Novels .................................................................... 1 The Local Imperative in the Study of Historical Novels ........................................ 9 Bad Historical Novels: The Case of Jicoténcal .................................................... 17 The Conquest Novel as a History of the Nineteenth Century ............................... 22 CHAPTER 1: WRITING THE QUEEN AND COUNTRY: GUATIMOZÍN, ÚLTIMO EMPERADOR DE MÉJICO (1846) BY GERTRUDIS GÓMEZ DE AVELLANEDA ...................................................... 31 Avellaneda as Cronista Mayor (Official Historian) .............................................. 31 The Historical Novel at the Dawn of Cuban Literary Narrative, 1834-1844 ....... 45 Changing Regimes: The Coronation of Queen Isabel II ....................................... 61 Guatimozín: Last of the Aztecs, First of the Creoles ............................................ 72 Guatimozín as Anti-Authoritarian Critique .......................................................... 78 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 92 CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF THE MEXICAN ARCHIVE: THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE ‘TZINS (1873) BY LEW WALLACE .............................................. 97 English-Language Conquest Novels of the 1840s ................................................ 97 The Emergence of Hispanism in the United States ............................................ 103 Invoking the Black Legend in The Fair God ...................................................... 114 Cuauhtémoc, the Last of the Aztec Librarians .................................................... 123 Romancing the Conquest in the Postbellum Era ................................................. 131 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 140 vi CHAPTER 3: IMAGINING POLITICAL AND RACIAL RECONCILIATION IN POSTINTERVENTION MEXICO: AMOR Y SUPLICIO (1873) BY IRENEO PAZ .......................... 144 The Rise of the Mexican Conquest Novel .......................................................... 144 Creoles in Crisis: Paz’s Republican Formation .................................................. 150 Journalism of Opposition: El Payaso and El Padre Cobos ................................ 156 Tlaxcala: The Great American Republic ............................................................ 166 Amor y suplicio as a Foundational Fiction .......................................................... 174 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 184 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 188 APPENDIX: NINETEENTH-CENTURY CONQUEST NOVELS .................................................... 195 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................ 197 vii Introduction Entró Cortés con sus capitanes, todos perfectamente armados, mostrando en sus semblantes, a par del orgullo que les inspiraba sus posición presente y las esperanzas de su futura gloria, el asombro de encontrar en la corte de un soberano a quien llamaban bárbaro, la magnificencia ponderada de las antiguas monarquías del Asia. (Cortés entered with his captains all completely armed, revealing in their countenances at once the pride which their present position inspired, the hopes of their future glory, and their amazement to find, in the court of a sovereign who was called barbarous, the wonderful magnificence of the ancient monarchies of Asia.) Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Guatimozín, último emperador de Méjico (Guatimozin/Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor of Mexico; 63/22)1 Nineteenth-Century Conquest Novels In the last five centuries, many authors have revisited the Conquest of Mexico, as Spain’s subjugation of the Aztec Empire is remembered, in original works of literature2. The most celebrated of these authors have been the historiographers—Bartolomé de las Casas, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, Antonio de Solís, 1 In this dissertation, I use two pages numbers to indicate the location of original quotations as well as to give credit to any English-language translations that I have consulted. In this case, the translation is the work of Helen Edith Blake, whose translation appeared in 1898. When only one page number follows the translation of a Spanish-language passage, the reader may assume that I have written the translation myself. 2 I want