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The Chimalpahin Conference 2007: Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness October 16 - 18, 200 7
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Fernández de Olviedo's Writing of America Kathleen Ann Myers Department of Spanish and History Indiana University at Bloomington
Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo worked tirelessly as Charles V's official on-site chronicler of the Indies. From 1532 until 1557 he poured over the reports by Spanish conquistadors, bureaucrats, and clergy in the New World and he drafted his own composite report about the general and natural history of the Indies, which he published in part in 1535 and 1547. This first comprehensive, eyewitness history of America reflects how Spain's royal chronicler attempted to integrate the "fourth part of the world" into European history, philosophy and science. It also reveals how through the pocess of writing about America, Europeans, and specifically the Spanish Crown, attempted to create and identity for America that would contribute to its quest to create an extensive empire that rivaled Ancient Rome.
In this paper, I discuss how the prologues to each of the three parts of Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias set out a methodology and ideology in which the writing of America becomes the writing of a new empire whose identity is based on rewritig myths, such as the Island of the Hesperides, and ancient history, such as the Roman Empire and Visigothic Spain and applying them to the situation of Spain and its new world territories. I will discuss how this viewpoint affects the selection and representation of indigenous groups, conquistadors' actions and new world natural phenomena.
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