Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
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Item EL MERCURIO VOLANTE: EL ESPACIO PÚBLICO Y EL DISCURSO CIENTÍFICO ILUSTRADO EN LA NUEVA ESPAÑA(2013) Calzada-Orihuela, Sofia; Merediz, Eyda; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)With an interdisciplinary approach, this project explores Dr. José Ignacio Bartolache's scientific-medical journal, Mercurio Volante (1772-1773), in the context of New Spain during the last decades of the viceroyalty. I argue that this journal is targeted to an audience as a platform from which enlightened values are transmitted and where knowledge is constructed as it enters into the public sphere. It is in the public sphere where knowledge is formalized and rehearsed as methodologically sound, as it becomes amply available, and gets exposed to criticism and debate. Furthermore, Bartolache consolidates his role as an expert, and his scientific authority that nevertheless transforms him into a moral guide not far from Catholic precepts. I explore the complexities and paradoxes of the Enlightenment in the context of New Spain, as I draw parallels and contrasts with contemporary thinkers, such as Benito Feijoo, José Alzate y Ramírez, and Joaquín Velázquez de León. I propose that Dr. Bartolache contributes to a more inclusive Enlightenment by configuring a local methodology, which fuses European scientific knowledge (Cartesian, Newtonian, and Boerhaaverian) with local experiences. This is especially evident in Bartolache's experiments on the pulque blanco, a native alcoholic beverage, and his observations and treatment of female hysteria. The Mercurio Volante, as I maintain, is a cultural object that reflects and collects traits of the political thought of late colonial Mexico under the House of Bourbon. Even though throughout its pages there is a recurrent objective to convey truths discovered by the demonstrative method, it is also placed as a response to the arguments diminishing the abilities of the inhabitants of the Americas. Dr. Bartolache counter argues the French naturalist Buffon, and his follower, Cornelius de Pauw, by participating in the Defense of the New World and contributing to the construction of criollo protonational identities. I conclude the Mercurio Volante consolidates the public sphere, which in turn strengthens Dr. Bartolache's authority, reinserting his ideas into the República de las Letras.Item Monsters in Paradise: The Representation of the Natural World in the Historias of Bartolome de Las Casas and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo(2010) Thompson, Katherine A.; Harrison, Regina; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the years following Columbus's landfall, European efforts to describe the physical reality of a hitherto unknown hemisphere led to profound epistemological changes. As recent studies by Canizares Esguerra and Barrera-Osorio have shown, early Spanish accounts of New World nature reflect an unprecedented emphasis on empirical methods of acquiring and systematizing knowledge of the natural world, contributing to the emergence of natural history and ultimately the Scientific Revolution. Sixteenth century texts were not, however, "scientific" in a modern sense. Empirical observation was shaped by scholastic and humanistic philosophy, and mingled with wondrous images derived from classical and medieval sources; these various discourses combined in ways that were colored by the authors' ideological perspectives on the justice of the Spanish conquest. This dissertation examines the interaction between proto-scientific empiricism and inherited epistemologies in descriptions of the natural world in the histories of Bartolome; de Las Casas and Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo. While contemporary historians of science acknowledge the importance of these works, they rarely engage in detailed textual analyses. Literary critics, on the other hand, only infrequently concentrate on the role of proto-scientific discourse. Rabasa has studied several natural images in both authors, Myers and Carrillo Castillo have examined the role of empiricism in Oviedo, and Wey Gomez and Padron have studied geographical representations, but few studies have focused exclusively on Las Casas's and Oviedo's portrayals of the natural world in its totality. This dissertation analyzes how the tension between discursive modes produced contrasting images, paradisiacal and stable in the case of Las Casas and liminal or "monstrous" in the case of Oviedo. Chapter One outlines the intellectual formations of both authors; Chapter Two examines spatial and geographical constructs; Chapter Three centers on flora and fauna; Chapter Four concentrates on food and agriculture; and Chapter Five looks at concepts of Nature as active agent. In each of these areas, Las Casas's and Oviedo's attempts to describe unfamiliar and often anomalous New World natural phenomena stretched, altered, and at times subverted existing concepts of the natural world in ways that would have implications for future notions of American nature.