The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative
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Rolena Adorno
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In this book on early Latin American narrative, Rolena Adorno argues that the foundations of the Latin American literary tradition are located in the writings that debated the rights to Spanish dominion in the Americas and the treatment of its natives. Placing the works of canonical Spanish and Amerindian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Bartolomé de las Casas in particular—within this larger polemic, she shows how their works sought credibility through reference to the narrative accounts they followed or contradicted, rather than the historical events they sought to defend or condemn. Demonstrating how these authors and their protagonists have been polemically reinvented in narrative form up to the present day, Adorno elucidates the role the “polemics of possession” played in the development of Latin American literary and political discourse.
Recipient of the 2014 Modern Language Association Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement, Rolena Adorno is Sterling Professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University. She is the author of Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, and coauthor of the award-winning Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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This book is a masterful reminder that often the chroniclers of the Indies chose 'the etheral airiness of myth to the cold antechamber of the archive...'"—Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Hispanic American Historical Review
Publication Date: January 9, 2008
25 b/w illus.
