Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America

Laird, Andrew / Miller, Nicola

Bulletin of Latin American Research Book Series

1. Edition December 2018
240 Pages, Softcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-119-55933-7

John Wiley & Sons

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This collection is the first concerted attempt to explore the significance of classical legacies for Latin American history - from the uses of antiquarian learning in colonial institutions to the currents of Romantic Hellenism which inspired liberators and nation-builders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

* Discusses how the model of Roman imperialism, challenges to Aristotle's theories of geography and natural slavery, and Cicero's notion of the patria have had a pervasive influence on thought and politics throughout the Latin American region
* Brings together essays by specialists in art history, cultural anthropology and literary studies, as well as Americanists and scholars of the classical tradition
* Shows that appropriations of the Greco-Roman past are a recurrent catalyst for change in the Americas
* Calls attention to ideas and developments which have been overlooked in standard narratives of intellectual history

Preface
1. Introduction: Classical Traditions and Controversies in Latin American History (Andrew Laird)
2. The Early Circulation of Classical Books in New Spain and Peru (Natalia Maillard Álvarez)
3. Gardens of Origin and the Golden Age in the Mexican Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis (1552) (Alejandra Rojas Silva)
4. Comparison and Seeing in the Mediterratlantic (Byron Ellsworth Hamann)
5. The Inca Garcilaso in Dialogue with Neoplatonism (Erika Valdivieso)
6. Universal History and New Spain's Indian Past: Classical Knowledge in Nahua Chronicles (Andrew Laird)
7. The Exemplary Power of Antiquity: Humanist Rhetoric and Ceremony in Seventeenth-Century New Spain (Stuart M. McManus)
8. Plato and the Guarani Indians (Desiree Arbo)
9. Classicism in Modern Latin America from Simón Bolívar to Roberto Bolano (Robert T. Conn)
10. Classical Motifs in Spanish American Nation-Building: Looking Beyond the Elites (Nicola Miller)
11. Greece and José Martí (Elina Miranda Cancela)
12. Pedro Henríquez Urena's Hellenism and the American Utopia (Rosa Andújar)
13. Born with the Wrinkles of Byzantium: Unclassical Traditions in Spanish America, 1815-1925 (Eric Cullhed)
14. Envoi: Whose Classical Traditions? (Jorge Canizares-Esguerra)
Contributors
Index

'Spanning half a millennium, Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America offers an impressive demonstration of the vibrancy of the classical tradition in a wide range of social domains and practices: education, the book trade, public ceremonies, the visual arts, popular culture and, above all, the process of nation-building. The contributors vividly reveal the impact of Greek and Roman culture on creole and indigenous authors and actors in the Americas, from the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Chimalpahin to José Martí and Roberto Bolaño. While there have been several influential studies of the ways in which knowledge of classical antiquity informed early European impressions of the New World, the focus of this volume is on the importance of the afterlife of Greece, Rome and Byzantium within Latin America itself.'
David A. Lupher, University of Puget Sound

Andrew Laird is John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities and Professor of Hispanic Studies at Brown University.

Nicola Miller is Professor of Latin American History at University College London.