Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
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Item Violencia, retórica y persuasión: revisión del debate en torno a la evangelización indígena(2014) Rodriguez, Maggy; Merediz, Eyda M.; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the sixteenth century, true piety and virtue became issues of primary importance for the emergent Spanish imperial design which sought to define Catholic Orthodoxy and to evangelize the people of the newly discovered regions of America. The antagonists of the famous Contienda de Valladolid (1550), Bartolomé de Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, were involved in responding to the emperor's inquiry about the legality of the war that Spaniards were waging against the indigenous people of the New World. The legal and political implications of their opposing arguments have been thoroughly studied by numerous scholars. Nevertheless, the main focus of this study is to explore the ways in which the implicit script of their work contributed to the religious debates of the century. The ultimate question debated in Valladolid, I argue, was to inquire into and develop the methods and rules on how to preach and promote the Holy Catholic Faith in the New World, which was concerned, above all, with perfecting the life of the spirit. These evangelizing ideas appear in Sepulveda's Demócrates Segundo as well as the summarized content of Las Casas' De unico modo, whose doctrine served as the basis for his legal arguments during the dispute. Such emphasis reveals that, although Sepúlveda and Las Casas had differing interpretations of Aristotle's ideas and opposing views on the legitimacy of the conquest and colonization of America, the authors agreed on the need to readdress evangelization, given the new challenges posed by the cuarta terrae. This dissertation recovers the missionary plan outlined in the Valladolid Debate and examines the nuanced differences of the methods proposed by Las Casas and Sepúlveda. It suggests that Sepulveda proposes a quasi-natural way of Christianizing Amerindians that requires their submission to the Spanish government so that, by imitating a superior model, the naturally inferior beings would rise to the excellence prescribed by the law of nature and become Christians. On the other hand, Las Casas advocates a more natural way of arriving to the truth through a cognitive model that relies on their reasoning rather than on emotions, as was recommended by the ecclesiastical rhetoric of Fray Luis de Granada.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.