sarah h. beckjord torical Imagination in the Early ROMANCE STUDIES Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Chronicles of Spanish America OF HISTORY TERRITORIES TERRITORIES His Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination te ess a TERRITORIES OF HISTORY enn beckjord in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America t s p pr Territories explores the vigorous but largely unacknowl- tant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Boston College. ssis is A d Territories of History isbn 978-0-271-03279-5 eological influences—categorizing historical texts from this period h 90000 t d Beckjord uncovers an important legacy of the Hispanic intellectual tradi- Beckjord uncovers ark, pennsylvania p engages both a body of emerging scholarship on early engages both a body of emerging modern epistemol- , empiricism and recent developments in narrative empiricism theory and recent developments to illuminate the y y t d tor 9 780271 032795cal an ersi ah h. beckjor v his anish American writing. In historical by writers works such as Gonzalo Fernández f oses no easy task, but Beckjord sifts through the information logical oses no easy in an effective, ion and updates the study of colonial historiography in view of recent discussions of ogy an importance of these colonial authors’ criticalimportance insights. In highlighting the parallels the sixteenth-centurybetween debates and poststructuralist approaches to the study o narrative theory. t Due to a convergence of often contradictoryDue to a convergence information from a variety of sources— as broader philo- literature, as well accounts, historiography, imaginative eyewitness sophi edged spirit of reflection, debate, and experimentation present in foundational Sp de Oviedo, Bartolomé de Las Casas, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Beckjord argues, not only informed by the spiritthe authors were of inquiry present in the humanist peoples. tradition World from with New but also drew heavily their encounters their attempts to distinguish superstitionMore specifically, and magic from science significantly the aforementioned chroni- influenced World and religion in the New from the descriptionclers, who increasingly directed of native their insights away a reflection on the nature of truth, rhetoric, and toward and fictionpeoples in writ- ing history. penn state romance studies romance series penn state university press state the pennsylvania uni sar www.psupress.org Sarah H. Beckjord’s Sarah H. Beckjord’s of History manner. At the heart of Beckjord’s study, though, is a fundamental philosophical though, is a fundamental study, the heartmanner. At of Beckjord’s problem: the slippery nature of truth—especially when dictated by stories. p TERRITORIES OF HISTORY Romance Studies editors Robert Blue • Kathryn M. Grossman • Thomas A. Hale • Djelal Kadir Norris J. Lacy • John M. Lipski • Sherry L. Roush • Allan Stoekl advisory board Theodore J. Cachey Jr. • Priscilla Ferguson • Hazel Gold • Cathy L. Jrade William Kennedy • Gwen Kirkpatrick • Rosemary Lloyd • Gerald Prince Joseph T. Snow • Ronald W. Tobin • Noël Valis titles in print Career Stories: Belle Epoque Novels of Professional Development juliette m. rogers Reconstructing Women: From Fiction to Reality in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel dorothy kelly Territories of History: Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America sarah h. beckjord TERRITORIES OF HISTORY Humanism, Rhetoric, and the Historical Imagination in the Early Chronicles of Spanish America sarah h. beckjord the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania Publication of this book has been supported by a grant from The Spanish Ministry of Culture. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Beckjord, Sarah H. Territories of history : humanism, rhetoric, and the historical imagination in the early chronicles of Spanish America / Sarah H. Beckjord. p. cm. – (Penn State Studies in Romance Literatures) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-271-03278-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-271-03279-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Latin America—History—To 1600—Historiography. 2. Humanism—Latin America—History. 3. Humanism—Spain—History. 4. History in literature. 5. Narration (Rhetoric). I. Title. II. Series. F1411.B43 2007 980—dc22 2007022491 Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. This book can be viewed at http://publications.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/978-0-271-03278-8 For Álvaro, Tomás, and Lucas contents d Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Historical Representation in the Spanish Humanist Context: Juan Luis Vives 15 2 Conjecture and Credibility in the Historia general y natural de las Indias by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo 43 3 Vision and Voice: The Historia de las Indias by Bartolomé de Las Casas 87 4 History and Memory: Narrative Perspective in Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España 127 Conclusions 163 Bibliography 171 Index 185 acknowledgmentsd This project has benefi ted from the generosity of a number of individuals and institutions. I am grateful to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University for the training, fellowships, and opportunities granted to me during the years of my graduate studies, when this inquiry began. In particular, I feel for- tunate to have participated in Columbia College’s Literature Humanities program. The combination of teaching and discussion among faculty that took place there changed my work in more ways than I can explain. The Boston College Faculty Fellowship awarded to me in 2004 granted invalu- able research and writing time that enabled me to expand the original scope of the book. A number of individuals have read all or part of the text in its different stages over the years. Félix Martínez Bonati, who directed the dis- sertation, offered crucial insight in defi ning the project and made valuable suggestions on the manuscript. I greatly appreciate the suggestions and com- ments from Michael Agnew, Patricia Grieve, Michael Schuessler, Herbert Klein, Gonzalo Sobejano, Flor María Rodríguez Arenas, Matilda Bruckner, Álvaro Aramburu, James Krippner, and the anonymous reader for Pennsyl- vania State University Press. I am thankful to Press Director Sandy Thatcher for his interest and for making the book possible. Kristin Peterson provided skilled assistance, and Stacey Lynn edited the manuscript with great care. The Offi ce of the Provost at Boston College contributed funds for the preparation of the index. Verónica Cortínez, Ourida Mostefai, and Krystyna von Henneberg offered key encouragement at critical moments. Needless to say, the errors and omissions are all my own. dintroduction many scholars have highlighted the richness of early modern writings on the New World, pointing to the complexities of narrative postures taken by writers who were often both participants and commentators on the proj- ect of discovery and conquest that Claude Lévi-Strauss once called human- ity’s most “harrowing test.”1 Part of contemporary interest in the textual wealth of the sixteenth-century chronicles of the Spanish Indies stems not just from the vast territorial expanse and novelty of the subject matter for European readers, but also from the ways in which these often strangely shaped writings are connected to the origins of modern forms of anthro- pology, ethnography, social and natural science, and also to the beginnings of the modern novel and of the discourse on universal human rights.2 In this sense, it has become a critical commonplace that early modern Spanish authors frequently blur boundaries between history, fi ction, myth, science, and philosophy, and that their informative reports and chronicles dispatched to imperial authorities are often packaged together with illusions of Eden or Atlantis, rumors of Amazons, and the hyperbolic self-fashionings of those who would seek to transform eyewitness experience into private or political gain.3 Yet alongside the often-commented-upon inventive and hybrid aspects of the early Spanish accounts of America, one also fi nds in some of these works a largely unrecognized but nonetheless vigorous spirit of refl ection, debate, and experimentation that seeks to delineate methods and narrative techniques appropriate for the writing of history. The broad reach of Spanish imperial expansion in the sixteenth century brought with it intense intellec- tual controversy that sought to grapple with urgent questions of justice and 1. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, 74. 2. Campbell, among others, has aptly described this phenomenon in her Witness and the Other World (166). 3. The continuing interest on the part of both historians and literary critics concerning the role of the imagination in these texts can be seen in the recent exchange between David Boruchoff, “The Poetry of History,” and Franklin W. Knight, “On the Poetry of History.” 2 d territories of history rights, truth and falsehood, fact and “fi ction.” While narrative credibility has