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"Of all the books inspired by the Columbian quincentenary, this is
easily one of the most challenging. Bodmer uses early Spanish
chronicles to take the reader on a journey of exploration. . . . A
richly detailed analytical history of the gradual awakening of a
critical consciousness concerning accepted versions of the
discovery and conquest of America."--Canadian Journal of History
"A quite splendid book."--Journal of Latin American Studies
The discovery, exploration, and conquest of the New World is here
imaginatively treated as a journey from fantasy to reality, from
complicity to rejection, from mythification to criticism. Focusing
on certain key firsthand narratives of the Spanish conquest, the
author views various journals, letters, and other documents not
merely as narratives of facts and events but as literary
expressions of the dynamics of the writers' experience: recording
the transformation of their perceptions of New World realities and
showing the gradual development of a critical consciousness that
questions their sense of identity and the validity of European
cultural models. The author illuminates the conceptual and
aesthetic developments that mark the beginnings of a new literature
in the making. Gradually, the aesthetic requirements and canons of
Europe are left behind as this new literature begins to convey the
new realities of colonial Spanish America that shape the complex
poetics of Alonso de Ercilla's great epic poem La Araucana. The
book begins with analyses of texts by Christopher Columbus and
Hernan Cortes, showing how the discourse of mythification
fictionalizes both the New World itself and the nature and meaning
of the conquest. Then, as the conquistadors' expeditions
increasingly fail disillusionment engenders ideological crisis,
questioning, and demythification, as exemplified in Nunez Cabeza de
Vaca's Naufragios. The book concludes by synthesizing the various
historical and aesthetic elements that led to the awakening in the
conquistadors of a new, divided, and contradicting consciousness,
whose first literary flowering was La Araucana.
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