Domesticating Empire , livre ebook

Domesticating Empire
Domesticating Empire
ENLIGHTENMENT IN SPANISH AMERICA
Karen Stolley
Vanderbilt University Press
NASHVILLE
© 2013 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2013
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file
LC control number 2012048870
LC classification E143.S76 2013
Dewey class number 980.01—dc23
ISBN 978-0-8265-1938-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1940-5 (ebook)
To my parents, Jim and Maggie Stolley ,
and to my daughters, Kathleen and Elizabeth Littlefield
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
An Insufficient Enlightenment?
CHAPTER ONE. Domesticating Conquest
José de Oviedo y Baños’s Historia de la conquista y población de la provincia de Venezuela (1723)
CHAPTER TWO. Domesticating Indians
Juan Ignacio Molina’s Compendio de la historia civil del reyno de Chile (1795)
CHAPTER THREE. Domesticating Nature
Félix de Azara’s Viajes por la América meridional and Other Writings
CHAPTER FOUR. Domesticating God
Catalina de Jesús Herrera’s Secretos entre el alma y Dios (1758–1760)
CHAPTER FIVE. Domesticating Gold
José Martín Félix de Arrate’s Llave del Nuevo Mundo (1761)
CONCLUSION. Unfinished Projects, Recuperated Remains
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Acknowledgments
History shows us that eighteenth-century projects are often left unfinished (Juan José de Eguiara y Eguren’s Bibliotheca Mexicana , for example), and this one might well have been too, were it not for the many colleagues, friends, and family members whose insightful guidance and unflagging support can never be sufficiently acknowledged here but to whom I am deeply grateful. To all, un abrazo .
Domesticating Empire took root over two decades ago as I worked on a chapter on eighteenth-century narrative for the Cambridge History of Latin American Literature , edited by Roberto González Echevarría (in whose graduate seminars my interest in the period was sparked) and Enrique Pupo Walker. Everything I have learned about colonial Latin American literature began with Roberto and Enrique, grandes maestros .
There are special people and places that made it possible to advance the project at crucial moments. First among these is Ruth Hill, whose unique mix of friendship and erudition kept me going over the long haul. Ruti, no hay palabras .
Many years ago, a summer fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library—that jewel of a collection in Providence, Rhode Island, in which so many texts from the early Americas dialogue with one another—provided a foundation for the ideas developed in this book. Rosemary Magee introduced me to the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Dillard, Georgia, where I was able to return to the project after a long hiatus during the summers of 2006 and 2008. A grant from Emory University’s Author Development Program opened a space for writing in my busy life at a critical moment; Amy Benson Brown’s wise and empathetic editorial insights have been invaluable in keeping me on track. A yearlong fellowship at Emory’s Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry made it possible to leave teaching and administrative tasks behind for uninterrupted research and writing in 2008–2009. I am most grateful to Director Martine Brownley, Associate Director Keith Anthony, staff members Colette Barlow and Amy Erbil, and all the FCHI Fellows for their collegial support during that wonderful year.
Emory College of Arts and Sciences generously provided sabbatical leaves and travel funds; I am also grateful for the generous book subvention provided by Emory College and Emory’s Laney Graduate School. The Woodruff Library staff—particularly Phil MacLeod and, in the Interlibrary Loan office, Marie Hansen and Sarah Ward—brought a wealth of eighteenth-century volumes within my reach.
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) and the Ibero-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (IASECS) have been for many years an essential forum for collegial interdisciplinary exchanges, exemplifying the eighteenth-century ideal of enlightened engagement that is dulce et utile . Special thanks to my amigos dieciochistas .
I am grateful to colleagues and students at University of Virginia, the University of Kentucky, the University of Oregon, Louisiana State University, and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Bogotá who heard versions of these chapters and offered valuable comments, as did audiences at various meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association, and VACARGA (the Virginia Carolinas Georgia Seminar, now the Tepaske Seminar). As I wrote, I thought often of Antony Higgins and Félix Bolaños—two colonialist friends and colleagues whose untimely passing deprived us of what should have been the fruits of long, productive careers.
Graduate students in my Emory seminars, now valued colleagues, asked thoughtful questions and offered many good bibliographical suggestions: Brittany Anderson-Cain, Amy Austin, Margaret Boyle, Ana María Díaz Burgos, Katherine Ford, Denise Galarza-Sepúlveda, Jeremy Paden, Ryan Prendergast, Eugenia Romero, David Slade, and George Thomas.
On the fifth floor of Callaway, Zinnia Johnston, Dasef Weems, and Amy Linenberger provided unflappable support regarding all things Emory. Zinnia, Lisa Dillman and Dasef helped with the occasional translation of a difficult phrase. Dasef always knew how to solve any problems involving formatting. My dear friends and colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese—past and present—are too many to name, but you know who you are!
A number of colleagues generously read various parts of the manuscript and offered valuable suggestions: William Acree, Santa Arias, Nick Fabian, Mariselle Meléndez, Jeremy Paden, and Dierdra Reber; Hernán Feldman heroically read the entire manuscript. Peter Bakewell offered a historian’s perspective and challenged me to make my argument real, and David Gies graciously extended his exuberant enthusiasm for so many projects to my own work.
In these times of great challenges for academic publishing, I feel extremely fortunate to have found a place at Vanderbilt University Press. Eli Bortz has been the kind of editor every author dreams of—encouraging, reasonable, and patient; Joell Smith-Borne oversaw every detail with impeccable professionalism. Peg Duthie, Wendy Herlich, and Michael Pantozzi provided meticulous copyediting and proofing; Bob Schwarz prepared the index. I am most grateful to the anonymous readers whose detailed and substantive commentaries made this a better book. I regret that my own shortcomings limited my ability to respond fully to every suggestion or correct every error.
To Peggy Barlett, Leslie Harris, Judith Miller, Laurie Patton, and Sharon Strocchia—each an inspiration in her own right and always ready to help with “a few small repairs”—a world of thanks. Bobbi Patterson, my writing hideaway partner, encouraged me to know what I had to do and begin my journey; Maureen O’Toole helped me to hear a new voice.
My family has been unstinting in their support—my brother, Jim Stolley; my sister, Beth Drucker, and her family; the extended Littlefield family, especially my father-in-law, David Littlefield Sr. (a gentleman and a scholar); and Lizzie Hill, who always seemed to know what was needed. My neighborhood friends offered welcome occasions for taking a break—Kim DeGrove and Clyde Partin, Marianne and Larry Gardner, Andrew McIntyre, Jamie Ramsay, Joe and Vicki Riedel, and Lizanne Thomas and David Black. David Littlefield kept the home fires burning, literally and figuratively, for which I am enormously grateful. No one could have been more interested in having this project come to completion than my father, and my deepest regret is that he did not live to see the book’s publication.
Domesticating Empire is dedicated to my parents, Jim and Maggie Stolley, and to my daughters, Kathleen and Elizabeth Littlefield. They have kept me grounded in love and laughter throughout the many years it took me to finish the book; their lives have been and will always be the beloved generational bookends for my own.
Introduction
An Insufficient Enlightenment?
Why don’t we read eighteenth-century Spanish American literature? This project began more than two decades ago as a meditation on this one central question. More precisely, how do we explain the almost universal omission—at least, until recently—of eighteenth-century texts and authors from the Spanish American canon? 1 It is not only literary historians who give up when faced with the eighteenth-century challenge; in La expresión americana (1957), a touchstone essay on Spanish American cultural production, the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima skips a whole century when he jumps from the baroque señor to the nineteenth-century romantic as sequential iterations of Spanish American identity. 2 Somehow, the eighteenth century becomes lost in the transition from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial period to the nineteenth-century post-Independence period. Thus, eighteenth-century Spanish American writing ends up being, to use Concolorcorvo’s phrase in El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes , a “peje entre dos aguas” (fish between two