La prudencia de Cortés: teoría política y práctica retórica en la Historia de la conquista de México de Antonio de Solís
The Historia de la conquista de México, published by Antonio de Solís in 1684, and later extensively reissued and translated, has been praised for the ‘elegance’ and ‘sweetness’ of its style. From very early on these qualities made the Historia to be read as a prose model worthy of imitation. Different scholars have studied Solís's sources and the way he manipulated them on the one hand, and, on the other, the extent of the reliability of his account. However, very little has been said about the actual writing practices of the Historia in the context of contemporary historiographical theories, or the author's own ideas about history or politics. This paper analyzes how some of these rhetorical techniques (I particularly focus on the use of oratio figurata, sententia, and epiphoneme) gave shape to Solís's political ideas, in particular the concept of prudence.
What Was History?: The Art of History in Early Modern Europe
List of plates 1. Historical criticism in early modern Europe 2. The origins of the Ars historica: a question mal posee? 3. Method and madness in the Ars historica: three case studies 4. Death of a genre Bibliography Index.
The Chronicles of the Early Seventeenth Century: How They Were Written
During the first half of the sixteenth century, the chroniclers of the Indies, those true chroniclers who were contemporaries of the conquest, wrote from personal acquaintance with the events which they were relating, as direct or indirect witnesses, relying upon their own experiences or upon the stories and versions of the other participants with whom they lived or whom their informers knew. But during the period which extends from the later years of the sixteenth century into the first decades of the seventeenth, those whom we would call the later chroniclers found themselves separated from the happenings which they were relating. For this reason they had to make use of different means. Further, this obliged them to depend on what their colleagues produced. They made use equally of the unpublished manuscripts of earlier historians as well as of works which were appearing at that time, either to follow them or to contradict them. From this arose the polemic atmosphere in which they had to work.