"Por Andarmos Todos Casy Mesturados": The Politics of Intermingling in Caminha's Carta and Colonial American Anthologies
According to the chronicler of Pedro Álvares Cabral’s arrival on the coast of what is now Brazil in April of 1500, less than a week after their first contact with the Portuguese crew, the natives ‘‘poucos a poucos mesturaranse cõ nosco, e abracauãnos e folgauam’’ (96) [‘‘little by little mingled with us. And they embraced us and had a good time’’] (24). The scribe later portrays the Portuguese as equally engaged in the ‘‘mingling,’’ while also suggesting that their motivation extends beyond ‘‘having a good time’’: ‘‘este dia os uimos de mais perto e mais aanosa vontade por andarmos todos casy mesturados’’ (96, my emphasis) [‘‘On that day we saw them closer and more as we wished, for all of us were almost intermingled’’] (24).1 Such scenes of peaceful intermingling and ‘‘merrymaking’’ (96; 24) between Europeans and Amerindians have earned Pero Vaz deCaminha’s letter toKingManuel a foundational position in the Brazilian literary canon and contributed to notions of the distinctive benevolence of Portuguese colonization. Historians and literary critics alike have interpreted the letter as not only the nation’s ‘‘birth certificate’’ but one that attests to a painless delivery.2 The Carta [Letter] may also earn a place in the early ‘‘American’’ canon, if the trend toward more expansive and inclusive anthologies of colonial American literatures prevails. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer’s The Literatures of Colonial America (2001) includes an extract of Caminha’s letter, along with selections from both North and South America that are translated from Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and various Native American languages. The preface to Carla Mulford’s Early AmericanWritings (2002) claims a similar comprehensiveness, stating that ‘‘texts included represent the cultures of Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, and English speakers’’ (xviii), although no Portuguese-language texts are in
Notes on the Comparative Study of the Colonial Americas: Further Reflections on the Tucson Summit
Inaugurating the Society of Early Americanists’ initiative in Early Ibero-/Anglo-American Studies, the first early Ibero-/Anglo-Americanist Summit brought together approximately one hundred scholars in Tucson, Arizona, in May of , in order to exchange ideas and questions about research and pedagogy in the study of the early Americas from various disciplinary angles. In the last issue of EAL four of the participants, Sandra Gustafson, Luis Millones-Figueroa, Dana Nelson, and Leonard Tennenhouse, offered their observations about the summit and valuable suggestions for a possible follow-up event. Dana Nelson proposed an innovative format in which the next summit might be conducted, while Luis Millones has made several recommendations as far as the location for the event. Leonard Tennenhouse has shared his ideas about how the program might be focused, while Sandra Gustafson has called for an expansion of the electronic anthology that might again serve as the archival base for the summit participants. Meanwhile, talks about a follow-up event are under way; and theMaryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities (MITH) opened in March  a new incarnation of the summit anthology. The ‘‘Early Americas Digital Archive’’ (EADA) consists of a data base of primary texts from early British, Spanish, Luso, and French America, which are encoded in .xml and browse/searchable via a search engine by subject, keyword, author, title, genre, period, and so on, as well as a ‘‘Gateway to Early American Authors on the Web.’’ Furthermore, EADA provides detailed documentation and instructions for early Americanists from all fields, including graduate students, whowould like to submit their editions of electronic texts for publication. The homepage of EADA can be found at http://www.mith.umd.edu/eada.
A New World of Words: Redefining Early American Literature.
Early American literature has traditionally been defined as writings in English by residents of the land that later became the United States. Thanks to this definition, it has only a modest reputation: "early" has come to mean "less" - less American and less literary than American literature proper. In this book, William C. Spengemann redefines early American literature, calling it writings in English that reflect or have been influenced by the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World. Spengemann argues that linguistic criteria should have precedence over national origin in determining the national literature to which a given work rightfully belongs, and from this perspective he examines a variety of works in new and provocative ways. He analyzes Milton's Paradise Lost as an American poem that reflects the impact of the discovery and settlement of America on seventeenth-century religious culture; traces the semantic development of the English word Columbus from its first written appearance in 1553 to its identification with the United States after 1780; and compares in detail Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, " and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, viewing them as comparable - and American - writings, all concerned with comprehending the displacement of the remembered Old World by an altogether new one.