Article’s main juice
-
Colonial literature reflects a mix of medieval
Spanish and Renaissance influences
-
Chroniclers (trends)
o
Spontaneous writers, with no training on how to
write
o
Interest in the “human element” – the natives
o
Awestruck tone
o
Focus on “I” – the personal perspective
-
Moral dilemma over what to do with the natives
(salvation/slavery?)
-
Major evangelism – y’all better be Catholic and
like it, even if you have no idea what I’m saying since you clearly don’t speak
Spanish…
-
It took a while for Spain to realize the true
financial value of the Conquest – until after the 1530’s, after getting into
Peru
-
Spaniards chased old legends in the New World
(fountain of youth, garden of Eden, etc.) and they also wanted to get rich
-
Division of lifestyles of conquistadors:
o
Rough-and-tumble fight for survival (ex: Cabeza
de Vaca)
o
Refined cultural life a bit later on
(Renaissance influence)
-
New significance of theatre due to intermingling
of Indian and Spanish elements and religiously didactic purpose
People from the list that are covered
-
Cristóbal Colón (pg. 28-30)
-
Bartolomé
de las Casas (pg. 33-35)
-
Hernán
Cortés (pg. 40-42)
-
Bernal
Díaz del Castillo (pg. 42-45)
-
Alvar
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (pg. 48)
Complete article/section notes
Introduction
-
“Spanish literature of this period is generally
considered a first renaissance and is characterized by its importation of forms
and ideas, especially from Italy” (27)
-
Conquistadors and missionaries brought
literature of Spain to the New World (27)
-
Early phase of colonization and colonial
literature reflects features of medieval Spain (27)
-
Main books/texts of colonial Latin Amer. were
ecclesiastical and didactic – two genres of interest were the chronicle and the
theatre (27)
The Chronicles
-
“men who came to the New World were driven by
the spiritual force of the Renaissance, but they were still guided by a
medieval vision” (28)
-
“their
chronicles penetrate reality without defining it” (28)
o
Idea of influence of Gothic style/era (like a
Gothic church)
o
Chronicles lack composition and unity of
Renaissance
-
** Chroniclers wrote
spontaneously and almost without training about actual experience –
allowed the marvels of the New World to penetrate and exalt them (28)
-
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
o
The first chronicler (28)
o
The letter which tells of his first voyage was
printed in 1493 (28)
o
He was unable to truly appreciate America
because he had wanted to find Asia (28)
o
Two themes of Renaissance – “natural man, happy
and virtuous; and nature, luxuriant and paradisiacal” (29)
o
The vision of America was idealized/romanticized
and constantly compared to Europe (29)
o
Columbus’s interest
in the “human element” – meticulous observations on the appearance and
customs of the natives (29)
o
Columbus felt like “more
an adventurer than a man of science” – he wrote to satisfy his European
readers’ curiosity, not to supply scientific info (29-30)
-
The people who accompanied Columbus also left
accounts
o
Diego Alvarez Chanca – first to describe flora
of the New World (30)
o
Friar Raimundo Pane – first European to speak an
American tongue; first teacher of Indians (30)
o
Hernando Colón – The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus (30)
-
Trend of attention
given to inhabitants rather than to land itself (30)
-
Controversy over the Indians
o
Affirmation of the Utopian dreams of a
paradisiacal landscape and a noble savage (30)
o
Some chroniclers declared New World inhabitants
to be inferior men without souls (31)
o
Transplantation of
European culture and resultant servitude of the Indian and intermarriage;
effort to spread Christianity [political thinking inspired by theological
thinking] (31)
o
Repartimientos – assignment of Indians to
different Spanish employers/landowners to work… some people were for this and
some were against it; very divided opinions (31)
§
The Dominican fathers who arrived on island of
“Hispaniola” (today Dominican Republic and Haiti) were very against
repartimientos
o
Profound moral
lesson/dilemma – men of a conquering nation bringing under discussion the
righteousness of conquest itself (31)
o
Indians were free so
long as they conformed to the Catholic Church (32)
o
Custom of “requirements” initiated in 1513 (32)
§
Each captain was obliged to explain briefly the
Christian concept of the world to the Indians so that they might know what to
abide by
§
The Indians then had to recognize the
overlordship of the Church and the Spanish king
o
Friar
Pedro de Córdoba (1482-1521) – manual Doctrina
Cristiana para instrucción de los indios, 1544
-
There were friars that defended the Indian from
military violence, one of whom was Bartolomé de las Casas
-
Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566)
o
He defended the principle that only the peaceful
conversion of the Indians was legitimate (33)
o
His chronicles were made up of very
difficult-to-navigate prose (33)
o
Indignant and ironic tone in chronicles (33)
o
He unmasked his fellow New World explorers to
show them as who they truly were, rather than heroes (examples: Cortés, Alonso
de Ojeda) (33-34)
o
Some interest in physical appearance/beauty of
other conquistadores (34)
o
Brevísima relación de la destrucción de
las Indias (1552) – superior
to other chronicles due to historical exactness (34-35)
o
Saw Indians as the descendants of the lost
tribes of Israel (35)
-
Colonial Expansion and the Chronicles
o
People who went to New World explored and many
of them (soldiers and missionaries particularly) became chroniclers because
they were aware of the importance of their adventures (35)
o
The chroniclers wrote
with pleasure, inspired by what they saw, but didn’t necessarily write very
well (35-36)
-
Conquest and Learning: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo
(1478-1557)
o
He’s not
on the list. (pg. 36-40)
o
In his chronicle, he talks about animals,
fruits, rivers, and indigenous rites of the New World.
o
Vision of universal order encompassing God,
nature, and man
o
Imperialist perspective – Spaniards were
superior in every way while the Indians were inferior
-
Hernán Cortés (1485-1547)
o
He wrote five letters to Charles V between the
years of 1519 and 1526 (40)
o
His great love for the conquered lands; he was the
first soldier to discover the greatness of an indigenous civilization (40-41)
o
Unemotional tone in his letters (40-41)
o
He appreciated the value of the social
organization of the Aztecs (41)
o
Awestruck tone – “feeling
that Mexican reality was greater than the mental framework that he had brought
from Spain” (41)
o
He was very hard on the Indians because of his strict
obedience to the Catholic Church and Spanish Empire above all (41)
o
Cortés treats the Indians sympathetically in his
writings – he shows them as frightened and confused (41)
o
Cortés helped establish the colony and was very
demanding, often pointing out the defects of the colonization, especially in
the friars and encomenderos (42)
-
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1492?-1584)
o
One of Cortés’s soldiers; describes him and
humanizes him by putting him in context (42)
o
Verdadera historia de la conquista de la
Nueva España – one of the
most impassioned chronicles ever written in Spanish (42)
o
Focus on the “I” –
the personal perspective (43) [this was a trend in several chronicles]
o
Rhetoric of false modesty – called himself “an
unlettered idiot” but knew how to reinforce his story with references to other
literature (44)
o
Cited novels of chivalry – idea of chivalric
motivations in conquest, such as loyalty to king, empire, and Christianity –
for example, cited Amadís (44-45)
-
Missionaries in Mexico
o
Friars wanted to Christianize the Indians, but
to do so they had to Indianize themselves first. Therefore, they learned the indigenous
languages (45-46)
o
Many of the friars recorded old indigenous
stories and traditions in Spanish (46-47)
-
The Defenseless Spaniard: Cabeza de Vaca
o
The Indians couldn’t believe the Spaniards were
mortal and drowned one in an attempt to prove it
o
The Indians were astounded by the Spaniards’
cruelty – stopped having children and sometimes practiced collective suicide
-
Alvar
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1490?-1559?)
o
“relation” of his wanderings – Naufragios (48)
o
Alvar left Spain in 1527 and suffered several
shipwrecks. Only four of the original group survived getting to New World and
beginning to explore. He was held captive by Indians for nine years, and was
converted in all appearances into another Indian, although always maintaining
his Christian faith. (48)
o
Great narrative quality of his chronicle (48)
o
Alvar was famous when he returned to Spain; he
went back to New World in 1540 to be a governor of some province (48)
-
Chronicles of the Conquest of Peru
o
After the conquest of the Aztec empire (Mexico),
the conquistadors looked for more of the New World to conquest. They wanted to
find “mythical” locations that they hadn’t found yet, such as the Garden of
Eden. (49)
o
After 1530 they started entering South America
(49)
o
Francisco Pizarro discovered the Inca
civilization of Peru (49)
o
Spain finally began
to understand the full financial value of the conquest (49)
o
Some other chroniclers (of Peru specifically),
none of whom are on the list:
§
Pedro Cieza de León
§
Agustín de Zárate
§
Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
§
Juan Polo de Ondegardo
§
Juan de Matienzo
§
Francisco López de Xerez
§
Alonso Henríquez de Guzmán
o
“During the Renaissance period of Charles V the
medieval Christian mind acquired an aggressive individualism that denounced
false social hierarchies and proclaimed the equality of men” – new attitude of
rebellion and non-conformity, which was reflected in texts such as Lazarillo de Tormes (51)
-
Chroniclers of New Granada
o
Mix of rogue-conquistadors and
knight-errant-conquistadors (51)
o
Idea of influence of Don Quijote (51)
o
Gonzalo
Jiménez de Quesada – compared with Quijote (51)
o
The conquistadors
chased the promises of legends – fountain of youth, silver mountain range, land
of cinnamon (52-53)
-
Fascination
with the legend of the certain women who lived apart from men – the Amazons
(53)
-
In
the Region of the Río de la Plata
o
Juan Díaz de Solís discovered the Río in 1516,
and other navigators proved that this was not the end of the southern land (53)
o
Settlements in this
area were attempts to discover roads to fantastic riches (54)
o
Pero
Hernández – Commentaries (1554) –
narrates part of Alvar Núnez Cabeza de Vaca’s story (54)
Renaissance Literature
-
Several anti-scholastic and pro-Erasmus thinkers
(55-56)
-
Friar Juan de Zumárraga – “believed in the
rationality of the Indians and in the salvation of their souls at a time when
many other Spaniards considered them slaves by nature” (55)
-
Juan de Castellanos (1522-1607) – Not on the list
o
Humanist and Renaissance-influenced writer (56)
o
Considered himself an “American Spaniard” (57)
-
Many Spaniards had a
refined cultural life in the New World – a university was established in Mexico
rather early on (56)
Fantasy and the New
World
-
People were chasing legends in the New World –
all of the ancient fantasies suddenly found a new place to theoretically hang
out in (59)
-
“We see, side by side, the speculations made by
the medieval mind and also by the Renaissance mentality, an attitude we would
call scientific today” (60)
Theatre
-
A theatrical representation of the end of the world
in the Nahuatl language in Mexico (60)
-
Religious plays composed by various friars (60)
-
Missionary theatre that aimed to teach the
Indians about Christianity (60)
-
Conquista
de Jerusalém – open-air representation of the wars between the Moors and
the Christians (60)
-
Because of popularity of theatre, “open chapels”
were constructed (61)
-
Intermingling of
Indian and Spanish elements produced an original dramatic type (61)
-
Audience actually participated in theatre – in mass
battle/dance scenes, for example (61)
