Pixels & Pedagogy
  • Pedagogy
  • About Me
  • Courses

Teaching Columbus' Letters about the New World with Horace's Epode 16

8/28/2015

 

Picture
Roman poet, Horace
Picture
I am going to take a brief break from my ongoing discussion about my course, Gender and Clothing in Shakespeare's Plays, to talk about a really productive revision that I've made to my American Lit class. I've written before about teaching Columbus to students in context with other Spanish authors in translation. This blog post will be about close-reading Columbus' letters along with Horace's Epode 16, sometimes called either "A Remedy for Civil War" or "The Isles of the Blest." Although Horace was writing many centuries before Columbus ever set sail for the New World, his poem is relevant for a discussion of Columbus' letters because he offers a model for talking about voyages and discoveries.

Here are some of the passages that resonate with Columbus' Letter to Luis de Santangel regarding the First Voyage and his letter to Ferdinand and Isabella regarding the Fourth Voyage.

Horace begins his poem with a lamentation about the destruction that the Romans have done in their Civil War:
What the neighbouring Marsians could not destroy,
Nor the threat of Porsena’s Etruscan armies,
Nor Capua’s rival strength, nor the fierceness of Spartacus,
Nor the Gauls, who proved disloyal in changing times,
Nor that savage Germany he conquered, with its blue-eyed youth,
Nor Hannibal detested by our ancestors:
Our impious generation, of cursed blood, will destroy,
And the land will belong again to beasts of prey.
I ask students to comment on what strikes them as interesting, and I tell them not to worry about proper nouns that they may or may not recognize. Usually someone notices right away that many of the lines in this section begin with "nor." I ask the students to consider the effect that this use of anaphora might have on a reader or a listener.  Very dependably, some student will mention that it's to "emphasize his point," as if that's an interesting idea. So I push them a little further and ask them to paraphrase this sentence into "2015 English."

One way to paraphrase this section is to say neither this guy, nor that guy, nor this enemy, nor that enemy, none of them has been able to destroy us; through out wickedness, we ourselves have destroyed what our enemies could not.

This paraphrase helps to develop the general statement about emphasis and it also points the students towards thinking about this poem as employing a combination of patriotism (no one defeated us) and shame (we are an impious generation). Here the students can see that the poem is still a propagandistic poem that ultimately praises Rome for its past glory even as it bemoans the present political upheaval. It sets up a lovely point of contrast with the end of the poem, where Horace describes the isles of the blest.

The total devastation of Rome through civil war creates a desolation that pushes the virile out of their former city. Quite simply, it is impossible to stay and it is impossible to return. Instead, Horace (either rhapsodically or ironically) prophecies that they will head out for these mythical islands:
You who have courage, away now with womanish weeping,
Sail on swiftly beyond the Etruscan shores.
The encircling Ocean is awaiting us: let us seek out
The fields, the golden fields, the islands of the blest,
Where the land, though still untilled, yields a harvest every year…
Jupiter set aside these shores for a virtuous people,
When once he had dimmed the age of gold with bronze:
With bronze, with iron, he made the centuries harder, from which
My prophecy grants the virtuous sweet escape. 
In this passage, Horace offers a beautiful depiction of paradise and he also qualifies some of his searing criticism of the Romans from the passage I quoted above. Whereas before they were an impious generation, now they are a chosen people, the virtuous ones for whom Jupiter has set aside a bountiful land of leisure.

I thought it was worth it to ask my students to talk about the idea that the land, though untilled, would still yield harvest. Intriguingly, some of my students suggested that this was a sign of "laziness" on the part of the Romans; that they wanted to reap the harvest without doing the hard work of farming. This lead to an interesting debate wherein some students maintained this idea whereas other suggested that, in Horace's poem, the land seemingly offers itself to them as a reward for their virtue. They have suffered, but now they won't any more. They see themselves as entitled to this land, which is part religious paradise and part fantasy. Horace's description is not a sign of laziness but a sign of hope.

The imagery and the themes of this poem dovetail beautifully with Columbus' letters. These are both excerpted in the Norton Anthology of American Literature. The first letter really captures the themes of both wonder and entitlement. In the second letter, Columbus' attempts to self-fashion as a hero even as his legacy is being tarnished and his honors are stripped away.

Here is a snippet from the first letter:
This island [Hispaniola] and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree, and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea, beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous… All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told that they never lose their foliage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and as lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November there where I went…
Discussion questions:
  • As your footnote mentions, the nightingale and the honeybee (which Columbus refers to obliquely later in the letter) are not native to the Western Hemisphere.  Why does he mention them (even indirectly)? 
  • Compare and contrast this description of what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic to the fictional Isles of the Blest that we read in Horace.
Students really liked thinking about how the island that doesn't seem to know winter and how it's similar to the island where the land yields harvests without farmers tilling the earth. Both of these texts contain a similar tone of wonder. 

This lead to a great discussion about whether or not Columbus seems to think that the Indies are some sort of reward to which he is entitled because of his virtue, past toil, and the glory of the empire for which he is writing. I direct students to the following passage to develop this discussion:
I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies with the fleet which the most illustrious king [...] our sovereigns gave to me. And there I found very many islands filled with people innumerable, and of them all I have taken possession for their highnesses, by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled, and no opposition was offered to me. To the first island which I found I gave the name San Salvador, in remembrance of the Divine Majesty, Who has marvelously bestowed all this; the Indians call it "Guanahani." To the second I gave the name Isla de Santa Maria de Concepción; to the third, Fernandina; to the fourth, Isabella; to the fifth, Isla Juana and so to each one I gave a new name.
Students pick up on Columbus' language here that Christ has "bestowed all this" on him and Spain, and we compare that to the idea in Horace that Jupiter has "set aside these shores for a virtuous people." The earlier debate about entitlement, reward, laziness and hope comes back to this new text. I also ask students to think about what's in a name. Why doesn't Columbus just use the name "Guanahani" to talk about the place where he landed? How does the act of renaming the island signify something. This question produced excellent student debate--about how Columbus shows what he values and what he does not value in this act of renaming.

The topic of how Columbus develops a persona for himself is a useful transition to the second letter:
The fear of this, with other sufficient reasons, which I saw clearly, led me to pray your highnesses before I went to discover these islands and Terra Firma, that you would leave them to me to govern in your royal name. It pleased you; it was a privilege and agreement, and under seal and oath, and you granted me the title of viceroy and admiral and governor general of all...

The other most important matter, which calls aloud for redress remains inexplicable to this moment. Seven years I was at your royal court, where all to whom this undertaking was mentioned, unanimously declared it to be a delusion. Now all, down to the very tailors, seek permission to make discoveries...

Who will believe that a poor foreigner could in such a place rise against Your Highnesses, without cause, and without the support of some other prince, and being alone among your vassals and natural subjects, and having all my children at your royal court? … It must be believed that this was not done by your royal command. The restitution of my honor, the reparation of my losses, and the punishment of him who did this, will spread abroad the fame of your royal nobility.
I simply ask students to identify how Columbus presents himself in these three passages. He presents himself as a proxy for the King and Queen (and thus a person of considerable power, even if it is borrowed), a heroic voyager, a genius who was first unfairly scoffed at and then poorly imitated, a slandered person who has become vulnerable, etc. The students will have a lot to say in response to this question, because Columbus is doing some considerable rhetorical work to present himself to the King and Queen.

Here a comparison with Horace is helpful. Although Horace mentions the "impious generation" (a note of shame) he does so in a way that emphasizes the past glory of Rome (a note of pride). While Columbus does discuss his relative lowliness and disgrace ("poor foreigner," "vassal"), he does so in a way that emphasizes his past heroic deeds.  The idea of Columbus as a hero is one that gets picked up in later history as well. For this reason, I like to bring in 19th century paintings of Columbus.
These three images are discussed (along with many others) at the website Painting History: Constructing National Identities with Art, on the page dedicated to Columbus and the Discovery of America. This is really cool website, and one worth reading or sending your students to for their own research!

I like to ask my students to study the three paintings and look for recurring motifs. Then I ask them to consider if they are propagating a myth of Columbus that he has set in motion in his own letters. I ask them to point to the particular passages in the letter that a painter might conceivably be thinking about.

Although Columbus might not have read Horace directly and the painters might not have read Columbus' letters, neither Columbus nor the nineteenth-century painters were working in a vacuum.  Myths of heroism tend to accumulate over time. They become archetypal, drawing from recurring patterns in our culture and affecting the way we see the world around us and our place in it.  This unit is just as much about myth-building as it is about close-reading.

With that in mind, I think that it is absolutely necessary to consider counter-narratives about Columbus that are much more critical of his actions. To this end, I ask student to read critiques of Columbus, both ones that were contemporary to him and ones that are contemporary to us, as I have written about before. I think that it's important to consider writers like Bartolmé de las Casas because he offers us proof that people in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were fully capable of seeing the humanity in the Native Americans and that the encomienda system that Columbus helped to establish was not an inevitable consequence of the Europeans' discovery of the Americas.

Next Page
Last Page

Tempest Act 1 Discussion Questions

9/20/2014

0 Comments

 

Picture
I really like to give my students a character chart of The Tempest either right after or right before they read Act 1. The names of the characters are similar enough, and there are so many repetitions within the play, that it can be quite confusing for first-time readers. I start with the following chart:
Picture
Obviously these aren't all the characters in the play, but they are the major players in the first act, and they all matter whether or not they speak at all in these opening scenes. Some of them matter even if they don't speak at all in the play--especially the women like Sycorax, who are removed from the action before the play begins. 

Before I even begin with close reading questions, I like to point my students to larger questions about repetitions and motifs in the play.

The first general set of themes that I ask them to think about are the sibling rivalries: 1) Prospero and Antonio, 2) Miranda and Caliban (if we think of Caliban as a type of surrogate brother) and 3) Alonso and Sebastian, a rivalry that becomes important in Act 2. I ask students to hold this in their minds, and think about possible sources for all of this pervasive sibling rivalry.

The second general set of themes that we discuss is the various types of master-servant relationships in the play, especially if we broaden our definitions of "service" to include courtiers and political subordinates:
Picture
At this point in the play, the servant relationships that students can most clearly discuss are Ariel-Prospero and Caliban-Prospero. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of these two characters, I ask them to remember to think about the ways that Caliban can be a foil for Antonio or Sebastian, and Ariel can be a foil for Gonzalo. I find that it is useful to give students topics or questions to be "on the lookout for" while they are reading.
Picture

Scene 1

  • How do the characters come across in this scene? What are your initial impressions of the noble leaders (Alonso, Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo) in comparison with the working sailors (esp. the Boatswain)?
  • Shakespeare has other plays that contain a shipwreck, but that don’t show the shipwreck (ex. Twelfth Night).  In those plays, the characters come on stage all wet and bedraggled and simply say, “Man, I was lucky to survive that terrible shipwreck!” Why does he show the shipwreck in The Tempest? What does that add?

The first question builds on the discussion of masters and servants in our "general themes" discussion. The students are quick to point out the kinds of hierarchies that are being either broken down or desperately upheld by the various characters. They get an immediate sense from Gonzalo's speech that social hierarchy really matters to these characters, even in the face of life-threatening catastrophe.

The second question can lead students in multiple directions. They often discuss the sense of chaos and fear that would be apparent from the scene, and good students also note that we the audience are like the characters on the stage in that we don't know yet that we are being manipulated by Prospero's magic. When we find out in 1.2 that none of the titular tempest was really as dangerous as it seemed, and that Prospero and Ariel were behind everything, we realized that we have been duped just as much as the Boatswain the the nobles. Prospero's seeming control extends beyond the stage even as far as our emotional experience.

In forthcoming scholarship, Bruce Smith argues that this scene helps to set up recurring contrasts in the play between music and noise that will enable Shakespeare to anticipate what we are now calling "sound art." Rather than listening for the sources of sound or the semantic meanings of sound, we are forced into a position of "reduced listening" where we hear the sound for what it is: raucous, terrifying noise. Whether or not we will be able to produce meaning or music out of the noise of The Tempest will depend on our position as listening subjects, rather than Prospero's position as magician (or even Shakespeare's position as playwright). Professor Smith has been kind enough to share his forthcoming essay with me, so I assign it as one of the student's presentation assignment articles.

Scene 2

Picture
In 1.2, I find that it is easier to parse out the various relationships that we see in the play rather than moving chronologically through the scene. The relationship between Prospero and Miranda is obviously one of the most important in the play, so I begin with it. I like to focus on the following lines:
The hour's now come;
The very minute bids thee ope thine ear;
Obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember
A time before we came unto this cell?
I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not
Out three years old.  1.2.36-41
Here, as elsewhere in this scene, I simply ask students to characterize the relationship between Prospero and Miranda. Students usually respond with some sort of comment about how it's weird that she's 15 years old and her dad has never told her about where they are from and how they came to be on a deserted island. Prospero's call to obedience is telling too, and this marks the first in many, many instances wherein Prospero tries to control another character with storytelling. He obviously and pointedly demands that Miranda listen to him over and over in this scene, but he also rehearses the story of Sycorax with Ariel even though Ariel tells him twice that he does not need to repeat the traumatic story. By repeatedly telling Ariel about Sycorax, Prospero keeps Ariel indebted to him and he is able to deflect Ariel's initial demand for liberty.
Miranda. Alack, what trouble
Was I then to you!

Prospero. O, a cherubim
Thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile.
Infused with a fortitude from heaven,
When I have deck'd the sea with drops full salt,
Under my burthen groan'd; which raised in me
An undergoing stomach, to bear up
Against what should ensue. (1.2.151-158 )
...
Here cease more questions:
Thou art inclined to sleep; 'tis a good dulness,
And give it way: I know thou canst not choose. (1.2.184-186)
These two passages do a great job of demonstrating the two sides of Prospero's character that are associated with his paternalism: his affection for Miranda and his obsessive need for control. Students can pick on his warmly affectionate tone here, but they often remark about how creepy it is when he puts Miranda to sleep. There's something about his narcoleptic magic that makes it seem rather like Rohypnol. "I know thou canst not choose" sounds suspiciously like "I know you want it," because both expressions diminish female agency but Shakespeare brings the question of dominance to the forefront even more baldly .

The question of Miranda's sexuality is, of course, fully addressed in this scene between the recounting of Caliban's attempted rape of her and her introduction to Ferdinand. I ask students to think about how messed up it is that Prospero makes Miranda go talk to Caliban moments before she meets Ferdinand... I ask them to put themselves in Miranda's shoes when her father makes her go talk with her unrepentant attempted rapist. Like he did before with Ariel, Prospero forces Miranda to relive a former trauma. We saw the payoff for Prospero when he uses a traumatic past with Ariel: what is the payoff for Prospero now, with Miranda?  This leads to our last passage about Miranda and Prospero:
Prospero. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance
And say what thou seest yond.

Miranda. What is't? a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.

Prospero. No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses
As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest
Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd
With grief that's beauty's canker, thou mightst call him
A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows
And strays about to find 'em.

Miranda. I might call him
A thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.

Prospero. [Aside] It goes on, I see,
As my soul prompts it. (1.2.409-421)
Students have been bombarded in recent years with a rhetoric that people are "born" a particular way. This has been a useful and productive means for the gay community to gain political support as they fight for civil rights, especially the right to marry. Pop singer Lady Gaga even turned it into an anthem for her album. 
Picture
Although the message behind the song and the slogan is one of tolerance, it is also a simplistic way to discuss a complicated idea like human sexuality. Shakespeare actually seems to endorse the opposite point of view in Prospero's relationship with Miranda. He carefully controls how she is first introduced to Ferdinand so as to precondition her to fall in love with Ferdinand. We know that this is his intention from the get-go as we see in the aside he makes to the audience in the passage excerpted above: "It goes on, I see / As my soul prompts it." He also primes Ferdinand in this scene through Ariel's song, which pours salt into the open wound of Ferdinand's grief over his father. The song describes in detail the way that Alonso's body will be taken by the sea and turned into coral and pearls. At that moment of painful grief, Prospero dangles Miranda in front of Ferdinand. The love that she offers is a form of instant pain-relief for the grief-stricken young man.

Prospero's
control over the lovers' inward experience of love continues into the scene when he sets up artificial roadblocks between Miranda and Ferdinand: "They are both in either's powers; but this swift business / I must uneasy make, lest too light winning / Make the prize light." He is making Ferdinand and Miranda feel like they are the stars in their very own romantic comedy. He plays the stock character of the senex iratus, a paternal blocking figure such as Egeus in Midsummer Night's Dream.  When Prospero starts playing that role, Ferdinand and Miranda fall in line as the lovers who prove the sincerity and depth of their love by overcoming and resisting his prohibition.  He knows that putting up this false roadblock will only make them want each other more. They are puppets whom he manipulates, even in such a seemingly inward and intimate sphere such as their choice of whom they love and sexually desire.

The concept that we are "born" a certain way--that we have a core essence of who we are that cannot be changed no matter how much society pressures us to do so--is a humanist claim that we have a fundamental "human nature." Through Prospero, Shakespeare makes the opposite claim that our seeming essence--even something as fundamental to us as our choice in mate--can be and often is conditioned by society in ways that we are only dimly aware of. In this way, Shakespeare presents Prospero to us as a sort of post-humanist. He constructs Miranda's inward experience for her in a social experiment. Scientists use the word "controls" to describe the various elements that they can manipulate and eliminate in order to study causation instead of correlation; in the isolated environment of the island, Prospero can adjust most of the controls so that he can run his social experiment with maximum efficiency to make Miranda love the exact man whom Prospero has chosen for her. He is living the early modern patriarch's dream.

Students are generally pretty attached to the idea that they are born a certain way, and that they have a core essence that has not been constructed by society. Asking them to think about the implications of the idea that Miranda has been "programmed" to love Ferdinand usually leads to some pretty interesting discussions about how our culture might attempt to "program" their own inward experience.


One of the few things on the island that Prospero can't control (or at least can't control well) is Caliban. I will discuss Caliban more fully in next week's post!


Next Page
Last Page
0 Comments

Teaching early lit of exploration in translation

9/13/2014

3 Comments

 

Picture
Christopher Columbus' map. Lisbon, workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus, c.1490. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (CPL GE AA 562 RES).
I teach a unit on early explorations of the New World. Because these narratives are in Spanish and then translated into English for the Norton Anthology, I have found that it's important to give a variety of angles into the texts since students can't "close read" with the same precision that they would be able to if they were reading the author's direct words. We read three Spanish explorers in this unit: Christopher Columbus, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and Bernardino de Sahagún. In the following blog post I will trace my general strategy for these three authors.

Columbus

Picture
Portrait of a Man, Said to be Christopher Columbus (born about 1446, died 1506), by Sebastiano del Piombo (aka Sebastiano Luciani), 1519. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The Norton's selections of Columbus' writings are unusual. The editors selected two letters that Columbus wrote: 1) Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage (February 15, 1493); and 2) Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage (July 7, 1503).  The first letter makes Columbus look like a hero who has discovered a marvel, and the second makes him look like a deluded man embittered by his fall from grace.

It is useful to compare and contrast the two letters to each other: what kind of persona does Columbus create for himself in each letter? How does he consider the Native Americans? How does he consider the Spanish? In the first letter, why does he reference things like the nightingale and honeybees which were not in the New World but were in Spain? To whom is he writing in either letter and how does that affect the way we understand his tone?

The Norton's selection opens up students to critique Columbus, but it also maintains enough ambiguity that they could still walk away from their reading with a rather simplistic and laudatory view of him still intact. I find it useful to bring in other voices to challenge their uncritical view. First, I give them a critique of the encomienda system that emerged from Columbus' policies, a critique that was written by Columbus' near contemporary Bartolomé de las Casa.  A selection of de las Casas' The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies (1552) is available in the Norton on pp. 38-42. In this section, de las Casas outlines in harrowing detail the atrocities that the Spanish were inflicting on the natives of the Caribbean. I like to ask my students: what is de las Casas’ seeming purpose in writing and how does that compare to Columbus? Compare and contrast the way that Columbus and de las Casas speak about the New World and its inhabitants. Also consider the way that these two early modern explorers use Hispaniola in order to draw contrasts between Native American culture and Spanish culture.

I also ask the younger students to read the essay by Ian W. Toll, “The Less Than Heroic Christopher Columbus,” in The New York Times, September 23, 2011, available online at this link, which is a really lovely review of Laurence Bergreen's Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 (2012). Toll summarizes various "readings" of Columbus throughout history and praises Bergreen for his assessment of Columbus as one who "became progressively less rational and more extreme, until it seemed as if he lived more in his glorious illusions than in the grueling reality his voyages laid bare.” Bergreen's book would be good to excerpt for older students, but Toll's editorial in The New York Times is sufficient for my purposes with ninth graders. I ask them to explain Toll’s criticisms about Columbus and to consider if they accord with de las Casas’ text. Additionally, if the early modern explorers’ account of Hispaniola can tell us something about the way they view Spain, does Toll’s account of Columbus tell us something about how he views modern-day America? Why do you think we celebrate Columbus Day anyway?

Cabeza de Vaca

Picture
Fun fact: "Cabeza de Vaca" means "Cow Head" in Spanish!
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had a crazy, crazy life. He came to the New World as part of the ill-fated 1527 Narváez expedition. After surviving a hurricane and losing the ship, Cabeza de Vaca and a handful of other survivors made rafts and floated from western Florida to Galveston, Texas, where they were captured and enslaved by the Capoques and Hans Indians. After years of enslavement, Cabeza de Vaca became a merchant and then eventually a faith-healer among the Indians. He and the other three remaining members of the expedition traveled by foot all over what is now the southwest United States, amassing thousands of followers. Over an eight-year period of wandering, Cabeza de Vaca ended up in Mexico City where he was reunited with his countrymen and then eventually brought back to Spain. He wrote of his adventure in The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, which he offered to Charles V as being "of no trivial value for those who go in your name to subdue those countries and bring them to a knowledge of the true faith and true Lord and bring them under the imperial dominion."

The Norton excerpt focuses on the initial period of enslavement and the reunion with the Spanish in Mexico city. I like to supplement the Norton's brief section with passages from The Relation that focus on what it was like for Cabeza de Vaca to become a faith-healer. As the excerpt above suggests, Cabeza de Vaca is on board with the colonialist project, but he also critiques the Spanish practice of enslaving the Indians, saying, "
they received us with the same awe and respect the others had--even more, which amazed us. Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way."

The way that he describes becoming a faith healer is especially useful for exploring his divided sense of self.  He alternates between Machiavellian cunning as he seeks to augment the natives' misconception that he is from heaven and heartfelt wonder that God has seemingly chosen him as a vessel to bless, heal, and unite people who are sick or at war with each other. In short, he alternates between wanting to use the Indians and sincerely wanting to help them.

I ask my students to trace the "narrative" or agenda that is pro-colonization, pro-Spanish, and pro-exploitation. Then I also ask them to trace the "counter narrative" that is critical of colonization, the Spanish, and exploitation. We consider also what might account for tension between the two narratives: is this symptomatic of a divided loyalty, a divided sense of self, a product of being in a liminal space between "Spanish" and "Native American"? Is Cabeza de Vaca the "first" American?

Sahagún

Picture
Illustration of Bernardino de Sahagún from Narrative and Critical History of American (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1886).
Bernardino de Sahagún also had an amazing life, although his was one of study instead of one of adventure.  He was a Franciscan missionary priest who spent more than 50 years studying the language, culture, and beliefs of the Aztec Indians. He translated parts of the bible into Nahuatl, the Aztec language. He also wrote the General History of the Things of New Spain which is considered the first ethnographic study to use objective and consistent methods for gathering information. Because of his innovations in ethnography, he is known as the "first anthropologist."

Very simply, Sahagún created a survey that he administered to the Aztecs about a wide range of topics. He administered the survey in their native language,
Nahuatl, and he interviewed a wide range of people (including women). The survey was very simple in its basic premise. The written responses--given in Nahuatl and then translated into Spanish in a side-by-side translation--suggest that the majority of Sahagun's questions were three-part: 1) what is a ____? 2) what is a "good" ____?, and 3) what is a "bad" ____?

Sahagún intended the General History to be an all-purpose reference book: a dictionary, a cultural snapshot for missionaries who were coming in to convert the natives, and a record of a culture to preserve it.  He also worked with the Aztec very closely. The research assistants for his study were all Aztec, and he employed Aztec "feather painters" to illustrate his book. Here are some of their beautiful illustrations:
Picture
The attorney
Picture
The solicitor
Picture
The virtuous daughter
Picture
Good and bad sons
Picture
Female physicians
Picture
A person suffering from possession, turned into an animal
Picture
A female weaver
It is really useful to ask students to articulate what the responses suggest is valued in certain groups. You can look at professions, at age groups, at gender groups, etc. Students can pick up patterns such as children are expected to be obedient (no matter the gender), and adulthood seems to be measured according to whether or not a person is responsible for teaching a younger generation. That is, adulthood is measured by having had children or by adopting children from other family members. It is also useful to think about similarities and differences between our culture and the Aztec culture. Although there are definite differences (according to the General History, a "good" grandfather is one who beats one with nettles!), there are also many, many similarities between our culture and theirs. This document suggests and invites empathy with the Aztecs.

World Digital Library offers high resolution scans of all volumes at The Florentine Codex, named for the best preserved copy of Sahagún's book (located at a library in Florence).

I find it very useful to compare and contrast Cabeza de Vaca and Sahagún, especially around the concept of empathy.  I use the following as a paper prompt:
Compare and contrast the representation of the Native Americans that we see in Cabeza de Vaca and in Sahagún.  How does the form of these two texts (the method the writers use to present information) affect the content of their writing (the actual description of the New World and its inhabitants)?

The two forms are so different: one is a series of definitions and the other is a series of event set into narrative form like an adventure story. The former highlights Sahagún's willing decision to empathize with the Aztecs (even in their own language and giving preference to their own words) whereas the other shows Cabeza de Vaca as he is forced to undergo a partial (but still incomplete) process of acculturation to the native cultures of the American Southwest.
Historical relativists would urge us to keep these offenses in perspective. It was another era, they remind us, when men were governed by different moral and ethical codes. 

--Ian Toll
The prompt, and indeed the entire unit, help to combat the "historical relativists" who excuse the darker side of the colonialist project as critiqued by Bartolomé de las Casas. We see that there was a vibrant and discursive debate about how the Spanish should interact with Native Americans and even moments of questioning why the Spanish would want to conquer the New World at all. Underlying these moments of questioning is the quiet insistence that Native Americans count as humans, and that the Spanish are opening themselves up to condemnation by history and the world for greed and barbarity.  Such a pedagogical move might even make students question why we want to rewrite history to excuse what happened at the beginning of Europe's conquest of the Americas.
Next Page
Last Page
3 Comments
<<Previous

    Claire Dawkins

    English Instructor at Stanford's Online High School

    Archives

    August 2015
    May 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    Categories

    All
    Assignments
    Beaumont
    Behn
    Beowulf
    Bishop
    Brathwaite
    Cartier-Bresson
    Chaucer
    Coleridge
    Creative Writing
    Dickinson
    Donne
    Early American Literature
    Exams
    Gender Theory
    Genre
    Glaspell
    Horace
    John Smith
    Lesson Plans
    Literature Of Exploration
    Melville
    Milton
    My Smart Friends
    Ovid
    Pearl Poet
    Pynchon
    Queen Elizabeth I
    Rowlandson
    Shakespeare
    Sophocles
    Spenser
    Sterne
    Texts And Contexts
    Theory
    Visual Analysis
    Walker
    Whitman
    Williams
    Woolf
    Writing Instruction

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly