Description: Sarah H. Beckjords Territories of History explores the vigorous but largely unacknowledged spirit of reflection, debate, and experimentation present in foundational Spanish American writing. In historical works by writers such as Gonzalo Fernndez de Oviedo, Bartolom de Las Casas, and Bernal Daz del Castillo, Beckjord argues, the authors were not only informed by the spirit of inquiry present in the humanist tradition but also drew heavily from their encounters with New World peoples. More specifically, their attempts to distinguish superstition and magic from science and religion in the New World significantly influenced the aforementioned chroniclers, who increasingly directed their insights away from the description of native peoples and toward a reflection on the nature of truth, rhetoric, and fiction in writing history.
Brief description: Sarah H. Beckjord is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Boston College.
Review Quotes:
"Territories reads like what it is, a first book, but only in the very best sense: it is concise, clear, well-organized and well-argued. Beckjord adopts her structure readymade from literary studies--a series of chapters on individual authors--and her argument is couched in terms of an established discipline, narratology. . . . Territories of History will take its place alongside the best work on the place of the chronicles in intellectual history."
--William Childers De Gruyter