Description:
Thomas Ward examines Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's seventeenth-century work and how it influenced post-independence Peruvian literature in the nineteenth century. As literati struggled to define their fledgling Peruvian Republic, they found inspiration in the dual-heritage author Garcilaso de la Vega's previously banned work, Royal Commentaries.
Ward focuses on four authors who turned back to the colonial-era chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega as they synthesized Inkan tradition into modern national thinking: Juana Manuela Gorriti, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Manuel González Prada, and Ricardo Palma. An element of this cultural dynamic included gender awareness. At the time, women were accepted in the literary establishment much more than they would be in the following century, a fact Ward highlights in this study of the two most famous men authors and the two most famous women authors from this time period. In Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Ward brings gender and ethnic perspectives into a postcolonial discussion of a reality that was striving to establish "Peruvian" as a bona fide proper noun with substantive denotative and connotative meaning.
Review Quotes:
"Inca Garcilaso de la Vega offers an erudite, sophisticated approach to the influence of Inca Garcilaso's writings after Peru's establishment as a nascent nation-state in 1821. Mapping a colossal corpus of texts, methodologies, and debates that were mining Inca Garcilaso's text archive in the second part of the nineteenth century, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega provides an engaging account of writers who founded Peru's national literature. One significant achievement of this book is that it demonstrates how the works of Juana Manuela Gorriti, Ricardo Palma, Clorinda Matto de Turner, and Manuel González Prada are immersed in Garcilaso's world. At the same time, this book comments on the dynamics of gender and race that determined complex destinies, especially for women writers, during this violent period."--Enrique E. Cortez, professor of Latin American literatures and cultures at Portland State University