Title: Figures of Conversion and Subjectivity in Colonial Narrative
Abstract:In several chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World, Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios, Bernal Diaz's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espafia, and el Inca Garcilaso de la Veg...In several chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World, Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios, Bernal Diaz's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espafia, and el Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios, scenes of conversion from an Old World self to a New World one provide a context for under- standing these texts' challenge to conventional histories of conquest. John Freccero's theory on conversion in Dante proposes that a conversion marks a point in the text where a new story is to be told. The colonial con- version stories tell a new version of America and its protagonists, far from the ideal historical paradigm. The ironic moments of conversion in these texts are also the lynchpins of a certain narrative irony that character- izes the chronicles in their questioning of models of authority.Read More
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 7
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