The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts TYPOLOGY AND THE PROMISED LAND IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY INTER-AMERICAN LITERATURE AND FILM A Dissertation in Comparative Literature by Sara Scott Armengot © 2008 Sara Scott Armengot Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2008 ii The dissertation of Sara Scott Armengot was reviewed and approved* by the following: Djelal Kadir Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature Thesis Adviser Chair of Committee Thomas O. Beebee Professor of Comparative Literature and German Sophia A. McClennen Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Women’s Studies Anne C. Rose Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Jewish Studies Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of Comparative Literature and English Head of the Department of Comparative Literature *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract This study addresses the role of typology in twentieth-century works of literature and film from the Americas, in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese, that deal with the meaning of America and of American history. Existing scholarship has focused on typological thought in colonial Latin America and Puritan New England, but rarely on other periods. This project, however, explores religious and secular concepts of America by examining how twentieth- century works employ imagery, structures, and themes that can be read as typological. The works analyzed in this study have been selected based on their contributions to the larger conversation about the typologically derived concept of the Americas as a providential New World. Many of the works foreground typological representations of a new covenant between God and America; some employ types in hybridized forms that can be read through the lens of typology as tools to resist oppression. This study examines the use of typology and hybridized types in utopian and dystopian representations of American Edens, Afro-Caribbean messianic figures, Native American counternarratives, and engagements with the concept of the posthuman. Literary texts from Brazil, Canada, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and the United States, written by Euclides da Cunha, Margaret Atwood, Reinaldo Arenas, José Enrique Méndez Díaz, Jacques Roumain, René Depestre, José María Arguedas, Mario Vargas Llosa, Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor, are analyzed in addition to films from Canada, Mexico, and Brazil by David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, and Glauber Rocha. The uses of typology and related interpretive strategies in these works provide a significant focal point from which to examine the persistence and development of religiously inflected conversations on the history and meaning of the Americas. iv Table of Contents Introduction—Typology and the Americas…………………………………………………...1 I. American Edens: Prophesying Paradise and the Politics of Performativity……………..41 II. From Papa Toussaint to Palma Sola: Messianism and Revolutionary Typology in Hispaniola……………………………………………………………………………67 III. Redemption in the Backlands: Typology and the Promise of History ………………….94 IV. Through a Glass Darkly: Rewriting Biblical Types in Fourth-World Typologies….…121 V. Visceral Types and Posthuman Futures: Alchemies of the New Flesh…………...……139 Conclusion—Aesthetic and Ethical Implications of Typology in the Twentieth Century…170 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………....……..…….175 v Acknowledgements I am immeasurably grateful for the support and encouragement of my dissertation advisor, Djelal Kadir, and committee members, Thomas Beebee, Sophia McClennen, and Anne Rose. I would also like to give special thanks to the Department of Comparative Literature staff and the chair, Caroline Eckhardt, and to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the Special Collections Library in the Paterno Library at Penn State for access to a 1718 printed edition of António Vieira’s Historia do futuro held in the Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for inspiring and challenging me along the way: Barbara Alfano, Riadh Bounatirou, Germán Campos-Muñoz, Nesrine Chahine, Lorena Cuya Gavilano, Jizelda Galvão, Katherine Hume, Robin Leon, Laura Lomas, Adam Miyashiro, Aldon Nielsen, Ralph Rodriguez, Nicole Sparling, Steven Thomas, and Loretta Zehngut. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the enduring support of my husband, Godys Armengot Mejía, my parents, Lynn and Randy Scott, and my grandfather, Robert Wasserman. 1 Introduction—Typology and the Americas Twentieth-century literature and film from the Americas reveal an extended engagement with typological worldviews and the ways these worldviews have been employed to shape the meaning of America and American history. Typology is an interpretive method derived from Judeo-Christian exegetical practices that identify a supernatural correspondence between a type, or prefiguration, and an antitype, or its fulfillment. Christian typology retroactively identifies the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament or type that prefigured or foreshadowed the Christian New Testament as its more spiritually significant fulfillment or antitype. This method of interpretation was explicitly employed by European explorers and colonizers who saw the Western Hemisphere as an antitype that would fulfill the promise of Europe. The frequent identification of America as a biblical promised land or a providential New World is rooted in a typological understanding of history as the progressive revelation of a divine plan. 1 The importance of typological thought in the early modern European construction and conception of America as the 1 Christopher Columbus himself identified South America as the location of the earthly Paradise in his account of his third voyage: “creo que alli es el Paraiso terrenal adonde no puede llegar nadie, salvo por voluntad Divina; y creo que esta tierra que agora mandaron descubrir vuestras Altezas sea grandisima y haya otras muchas en el Austro de que jamas se hobo noticia. Yo no tomo quel Paraise terrenal sea en forma de montaña aspera como el escrebir dello nos amuestra, salvo quel sea en el colmo alli donde dije la figura del pezon de la pera” (Columbus 137; “I am convinced that it is the spot of the earthly paradise, whither no one can go but by God's permission; but this land which your Highnesses have now sent me to explore, is very extensive, and I think there are many other countries in the south, of which the world has never had any knowledge. I do not suppose that the earthly paradise is in the form of a rugged mountain, as the descriptions of it have made it appear, but that it is on the summit of the spot, which I have described as being in the form of the stalk of a pear” Major 137). 2 New World has been established.2 However, the majority of scholarly contributions to the study of typology in the Americas have focused on Puritan uses of typology. While existing scholarship demonstrates the impact of typological thought in the contexts of colonial Latin America and Puritan New England, the continued significance of typology in twentieth-century American cultural production has not been sufficiently analyzed. This study expands on previous scholarship by examining the twentieth-century literary and filmic legacies of the typological construction of America throughout North America, South America, and the Caribbean. This work furthers the conversation on the interaction of religious and secular concepts of America by examining some ways in which twentieth-century literature and film employ typology. Typological or figural interpretation characteristically authorizes a correspondence between two or more events, people, places, or things based on the coordinates of a divine plan. The premise of such a supernaturally created or sanctioned correspondence draws on the logic of divine election, whether based on a specific religious faith, or framed along the lines of national, ethnic, or other group identity markers that take on attributes of conviction. Assertions of divine election as a source of authority, identity, and destiny are frequently demonstrated through such typological correspondence and are a key component in narratives concerning the meaning of America and American history, whether these narratives ultimately embrace, question, or criticize such assertions. 2 On the typological construction of America as inspired by the ideas of Joachim de Fiore and his followers, see Phelan and Kadir, Columbus. 3 Typology as an exegetical practice is often associated with early Christian, medieval, and Puritan traditions of interpretation.3 However, typology is also significantly employed in the works of writers of literature and film-makers from throughout the Americas. While typology as an interpretive tool is often used to reinforce, challenge, and satirize the concept of the Americas as a providential New World, there is also a hybridized appropriation of typology that is employed as a tool of resistance to oppression. While the literary uses of religious typology that were developed by the Puritans in New England have been the subject of much discussion, relatively little work has been done on the use of typology at other times and in other locations within the Americas. This study contributes to the field of Inter-American Studies by addressing the general scholarly neglect of typology in twentieth-century inter-American literature