1492–1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing

Ed. René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini
Underscores the importance of writing as companion of empire, while at the same time highlighting its subversive power as a series of counter-narratives emerge to contest the tactics and values of the "victors."

Table of Contents

Introduction: Allegorizing the New World

René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini

  1. Literacy and Colonization: The New World Experience

    Walter Mignolo

  2. Narration and Argumentation in the Chronicles of the New World

    Antonio Gómez-Moriana

  3. Silence and Writing: The History of Conquest

    Beatriz Pastor

  4. The Apprehension of the New in Nature and Culture: Fernando de Oveido’s Sumario

    Stephanie Merrim

  5. Arms, Letters and the Native Historian in Early Colonial Mexico

    Rolena Adorno

  6. Montaigne and the Indies: Cartographies of the New World

    Tom Conley

  7. Utopian Ethnology in Las Casas’s Apologética

    José Rabasa

  8. The Early Stages of Latin American Historiography

    Beatriz González

  9. Representing the Colonial Subject

    Iris Zavala

  10. The Inscription of Creole Consciousness: Fray Servando de Mier

    René Jara

Appendix: Documenting the Conquest

  • The Charter of Admiral Colombia (17 April 1492)
  • Instructions from the Sovereigns to Columbus (29 May 1493)
  • Article of the Testament of the Queen Our Lady Isabella
  • Instruction from Diego Velázquez to Cortés (23 October 1510)
  • Against those who deprecate or contradict the Bull and Decree of Pope Alexander VI