Literatura y realidad histórica en Las conversiones de Martín Recuerda

Abstract

Kathleen M. Glenn and Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, eds. Spanish Women Writers and the Essay. Gender, Politics, and the Self. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. 294 pp. $34.95.

Watson, Janell. Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust. The Collection and Consumption of Curiosities. Cambridge University Press, 1999. x + 227 pp.

Anne J. Cruz. Discourses of Poverty: Social Reform and the Picaresque Novel in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 320 pp.     

Espacios locales y espacios trascendentales de la conversión: las Postrimerías de Carabuco y la producción performativa de epistemologías transculturales

The monumental paintings of the Postrimerías [Four Last Things] from the church of Carabuco (1684) serve as objects to study the complex dynamics of the visual and performative production of religious knowledge in a colonial contact zone. The article presents different ‘readings’ of the series that focus on possible uses and receptions of the paintings by local actors. These readings are based, on the one hand, on the idea of conceiving the series as a ‘cycle of meditation’ and product of the influences of Christian mysticism that played an important role in the ‘eschatological politics of conversion’ of the southern Andean Highlands. On the other hand, the paintings relate the eschatological message with the local hagiographic narratives of a pre-Hispanic apostle associated simultaneously with the Christian apostle Bartholomew and the Andean deity Tunupa—the most important figure of Aymara mythology. These works therefore represent objects of memory that participate in the local construction of time and space and that refer not only to Christian eschatological concepts but also to local Andean ontologies.     

La ejecución de Atahuallpa: Símbolo andino de colapso y resistencia

This article studies Los dramas de Atahuallpa (Atahuallpa's Dramas) as an oral and ritual memory of the Andean natives. In those texts are traces of the resistance of the European domination initiated during the middle of the sixteenth century. They also recall the destruction of the Inca empire. The discussion points out the work done by the panaca, a Tahuantisuyo institution dedicated to preserving the memory of each Incan emperor's public life. During the twentieth century and the present years of the twenty-first, the tradition of representing Atahuallpa's death has been an expression of the political projects built by the native Andean as well as a symbol of the resistance against the conquest and its results.     

Cartografía emocional entre la China y la Gloria: Agustín de Foxá, Víctor Ruiz Iriarte y la Modernidad

Both Agustín de Foxá and Víctor Ruiz Iriarte premiered their first plays very near the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939. The two playwrights appear to belong to the same imaginative and poetical vein, but in fact Foxá yearns for an impossible return to an idealized past, in a pessimistic lamentation against Modernity—that is, precisely, his exotic drama Cui-Ping-Sing. The poetical theatre Ruiz Iriarte endorses in Un día en la Gloria, and thinks apt to Modern times, is based in a radical optimism—the idea that fantasy can always transform and improve a disappointing reality.     

Revuelta plebeya,conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza en la Historia del Reino de Quito,de Juan de Velasco

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional (1789), de Juan de Velasco, a partir de las ideas políticas y jurídicas de su autor. Sugiere abordar el tomo tercero de la Historia no solamente como un relato del declive social y económico que aqueja a la Audiencia de Quito, sino como un comentario a la crisis de gobernanza que, según Velasco, inicia con el ascenso de los Borbones al trono. La incapacidad jurídica de controlar la mestización de la sociedad y las desacertadas políticas de las autoridades peninsulares, resultan en la Rebelión de los Barrios de Quito, episodio que representa el clímax de las penurias que atraviesa el Reino y que le permite a Velasco cuestionar el modelo de gobierno establecido por los reformistas ilustrados, abogar por la necesidad de un gobierno criollo y restaurar la desgastada imagen de la Compañía de Jesús.     

María Rosa Lida,Borges y una cita inexistente de Lucrecio: filología y auctoritas

In 1952, María Rosa Lida de Malkiel published a work in Sur magazine about the literary sources of Jorge Luis Borges. In the second paragraph of that work she relates a passage from one of the Argentine's stories with a verse from the Aeneid and, later on, two verses of the poem “Las calles” with some others from Lucretius' work De rerum natura. In both cases, she cites the number of the book and verse of the Latin poets. The one referring to Virgil is correct; however, Lucretius' verses are apocryphal. In this work, I analyze the reasons the eminent philologist could have had to carry out tremendous artifice and, at the same time, the objective and personal qualms that, during the revision, produced the auctoritas of her figure.     

Topoiesis: Procesos de espacialización en la literatura (crítica y metodología)

ABSTRACT

Space in literary texts has been widely studied but poorly systematized. There is no valid method of analysis that gives space a critical meaning. For instance, critics have eluded the fact that time and space cannot be considered separately. On the other hand, they have used concepts or methods from disciplines aside literature such as anthropology, biology, psychology, or geography that do not help clarify the meaning or signification of a literary text. We begin this article by giving a review of the main theoretical and critical positions regarding space in literature from the second half of the twentieth century. We do this in order to evaluate the main results those studies have attained. Later on, we propose a methodology that may clarify the significance of space in a literary text. The concept topoiesis (as far as we know, it has not been used in the humanities) represents for us a key word. It helps us to distinguish one main process where space can turn from a signification practice to the production of meaning in a literary text.     

Writing violence in Seventeenth-Century Yucatan: Fray Bernardo de Lizana's Devocionario de nuestra Señora de Izamal y Conquista espiritual de Yucatán (1633)

Although long considered a minor work, Franciscan friar Bernardo de Lizana's Devocionario de nuestra Señora de Izamal y Conquista espiritual de Yucatán (1633) is key for understanding what the author himself termed the ‘spiritual conquest’ of colonial Yucatan. Deploying José Rabasa's concept of ‘writing violence,’ this essay shows how this text works to promote a culture of forceful spiritual conquest, reminiscent of the culture of spiritual conquest of the primitive Yucatecan church (1545–1562), in order to complete the conquest of the last independent Maya on the peninsula.     

Identidad,pasaportes y vigilancia política: la expulsión de los extranjeros de Buenos Aires en 1809–1810

Due to the crisis caused by the Napoleonic occupation of Spain in 1808 and the general fear of independence movements fostered by French and Portuguese agents, the government of the last viceroy of Buenos Aires, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, by the end of 1809 decided on the expulsion of foreigners from the Viceroyalty of the River Plate. In order to control and expel the foreigners in an efficient way, the government introduced new measures and institutions of surveillance. While, thus far, a foreigner had been accepted as a neighbour (vecino) by integration, and the marriage to a local woman protected him from expulsion, this social practice now lost its significance. Instead, the political conduct and notably the foreigner's nation of origin now became crucial to his acceptance. This process can be understood in the wider sense of the framework of Atlantic history as an attempt by the Spanish Metropolis to regain control over a region were transimperial networks were very active. This article is based on original documents mainly from the Argentinean National Archive in Buenos Aires and on edited sources.     

Epistemologías transculturales: prácticas y producción de conocimientos en zonas de contacto colonial en los Andes y Paraguay

It is proposed that there is an iconographic and epistemological relationship between some drawings in Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno and the images recorded in several colonial wood vessels (qeros) which circulated widely during the time that Guaman Poma was writing his letter to the King of Spain. This connection shows that the work of Guaman Poma was not an isolated or singular act in the colonial context and that both communicative and creative processes, that of the Nueva corónica and that of the qeros, formed part of a process of shared colonial semiosis through which Andean societies maintained a certain autonomy in the production and circulation of their own discourses. Secondly, the article discusses the epistemological tension that results from the coexistence of different narratives (European and Andean) that used their own temporal and spatial categories to account for new colonial conditions.     

Descubrimiento,geografía y origen de los discursos hispanoamericanos

Imaginación del Nuevo Mundo. Diez estudios sobre los inicios de la narrativa hispanoamericana. By JOSE JUAN ARROM. México: Siglo XXI Editores, 1991. Pp. 196.

Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture. By REGINA HARRISON. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Pp. xvii, 233.

The Armature of Conquest: Spanish Accounts of the Discovery of America, 1492–1589. By BEATRIZ PASTOR. Translated by LYDIA LONGSTRETH HUNT. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Pp. x, 317.

Mil leguas por América. De Lima a Caracas 1740–1741. Diario de don Miguel de Santisteban. Preliminary study by DAVID J. ROBINSON. Bogotá: Banco de la República, 1992. Pp. 323.     

Lírica y novela pastoril de la Colonia: Nuevas ediciones

Grandeza Mexicana de Bernardo de Balbuena. Edición crítica de JOSÉ CARLOS GONZÁLEZ BOIXO. Roma: Bulzoni, 1988. Pp. 123.

Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erífile de Bernardo de Balbuena. Edición, introducción y notas de JOSÉ CARLOS GONZÁLEZ BOIXO. Xalapa: Universidad Veracruzana, 1989. Pp. 320 (más páginas e índices de ilustraciones).

Primera parte del Parnaso Antártico de obras amatorias de Diego Mexía. Edición facsimilar. Introducción de TRINIDAD BARRERA. Roma: Bulzoni, 1990. Pp. 276.     

El codescubridor Juan Niño y el puerto de San Juan en el marco de la marinería andaluza y de los viajes de Colón

Este trabajo de investigación ofrece resultados inéditos en relación con Juan Niño —maestre y propietario de la carabela Niña— que colaboró de forma relevante con Cristóbal Colón en la preparación de la armada en 1492 y en su primera travesía oceánica a tierras americanas. Asimismo, desvela el lugar concreto de vecindad y de residencia de este marino en el puerto de San Juan (Huelva, España) mediante documentación contrastada, así como el periodo en el que se produjo su fallecimiento permitiendo aclarar especulaciones historiográficas que ofrecían determinados datos erróneos sobre su trayectoria vital después del descubrimiento de América. Por último, aporta datos indicativos sobre el estatus socioeconómico y el nivel de rentas disfrutado por el codescubridor de América y por su familia.