the discovery of america and european renaissance literature

8/12/2019 The Discovery of America and European Renaissance Literature

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The Discovery of America and European Renaissance LiteratureAuthor(s): Percy G. AdamsSource: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, Special Bicentennial Issue: AmericanLiterature in World Opinion (Jun., 1976), pp. 100-115Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40241808.

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The Discoveryof AmericaandEuropeanRenaissanceLiteraturePERCY G. ADAMS

ABSTRACTAny study of the effect of the discovery of the New Worldis complicated bymany factors - that world's changing image, true reports competing with falseones and with legends, the geographical position occupied in America by a par-ticular European country, the biases of a nation or of a visitor or a commentator.Nevertheless, the discovery and resulting exploration did affect every importanttheme in Renaissance literature. Besides the best known of these themes - theNoble Savage and Earthly Paradise - it gave rise to the theme of "Spanish Cruelty,"first exposed by Spain itself and then eagerly adopted by, say, England and France,and gave great impetus to the theme of progress, found not only among thinkersfrom Vives to Bodin but among writers of belles lettres from Torres Naharro toRonsard to Bacon and Jonson. Every literary genre also showed the effect ofgrowing information about and interest in America, from lyric poets like Ron-

sard and Donne, to embarkation ode and sermon writers, to satirists like Brantwith his Narrenschiff. Then there are the romances that inspired explorationand borrowed marvels from America; the epics like Ercilla's; the travel and pseudo-travel books; and the Utopias. While it may be true thatin the Renaissance morebooks were still being written about Europe and the ancients, the New Worldbegan to stir imaginations and inspire the best of writers. Of many conclusionsdrawn from a condensed study, one is that while America inspired so much litera-ture, in whole or in part, its exploration and its culture, even in the Renaissance,were also inspired by that literature. (PGA)There is great dangerin talking about the "Renaissance,"almost asmuch dangeras there is in using other such terms - "Classicism,""Ro-

manticism," "Baroque." Tags are neat but they are constricting and, ul-timately, confusing. Haydn's fine study has suggestedthat to avoid a"doctrinaireapproach"1 we can demonstrate the diversity of the peri-od by speakingof a Renaissanceand then of a Counter-Renaissance.Butwhile two categories may be more acceptable than one, the thesis de-pends on leavingthe so-called backward-looking"Classicists" n the"Renaissance"and placing the reforming "Romanticists" in the "Counter-Renaissance,"Calvin and Machiavelli ying side by side in the countercamp. And so, havingredefined by employing definitions that are them-selves "doctrinaire"and, today, almost useless - witness Donald Greeneon "Neo-Classicism" we are back to our problem. Fortunately, we neednot define but can simply agreethat we are concerned with the literatureof Europe at a period in time extending from the discovery of the NewWorld n the Westto about the middle of the seventeenth century.But we are to discuss not only the literature of the Renaissance;but

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LITERATURE AND DISCOVERY 101

also that New Worldin the West.And, no doubt, to define thatWorld s even harder than to define the Renaissance- for manyreasons. First,just as the Renaissancechangedits countenancewith time, so its knowledge of the Americas altered with every new-ly returnedship and every freshly written account, from the oft-published letters of Columbus and Vespucci to Raleigh and VanNoort, and from great collections such as Montalboddo's andWaldseemiiller'sn 1507 to Acosta and De Bry at the end of thesixteenth century.2 And, with changinginformation, maps werealteredeach decade; terrestrialglobes replaced celestial globes;places and place names came and went, expanded or contracted.Second, each part of Europe had its writersand its time forlearning.The Italiansand the Spanish, for example, were quickwith their books while the Englishwere notoriously late in sailingor publishing.Third, the SpanishNew Worldexisted from Florida south;Franceended in the late sixteenth century with its New WorldinCanada,while Englandonly after 1580 corneredits VirginiaandNew England.Thus, because of different climatic conditions, kindsof people encountered, fur-seekingin Canadaand gold-seeking inSouth America, the extended and heavy impact of Spanish cultureon its possessions as opposed to a shorter and smallerimpact inNorth America - because of many factors, then, each empire-seekingnation received its particular mage with the use of theterm "New World."Fourth, since the Old World civilization and the New Worldpeoples at first found it impossible to communicate with eachother, not only, for example, do reports of the ConquistadoresofSouth and North America conflict but they often show how thenatives, out of fear, told not the truth but what the threateningEuropeanswanted to hear.Because, fifth, Europe brought much of its own image and biaswith its soldiersand priests who crossed the Atlantic. Over and overit has been shown how Europe searchedfor, or found to its satis-faction, the TerrestrialParadise,Atlantis, Ophir,even PresterJohn.3And there were other marvelstransplantedor invented, from inter-pretations of Indian religion to fantastic naturalfacts such as Piga-fetta's Patagoniangiants, David Ingram'selephants in North Ameri-ca, or John Hawkins' Florida unicorn.4Sixth, the image of the New Worldwas not only constantlychangingand corruptedby its reporters,but various conflictingtraditions grew up depending on whom one read - translators,for example, often blatantly altered facts that may or may nothavebeen right to begin with. There was, for example, what Levincalls "the moral ambivalenceof the golden lure" in the searchfor



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102 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Paradise n the West,5 or the double myth about the indigenesofthe Indies - one, that he was a Noble Savage,the other that he wassub-humanand should be enslaved or exterminated. One example ofintended mistranslationis the renderingof the SpanishphysicianNicolas Monardes(1569-71) by John Frampton/5 who left the im-pressionthat all plants in the New Worldwere health-givingand thathenceforth there would be a cure for every physical ill; another is thatof the zealous Hakluyt and his treatment of the account of De Soto'sexpedition as written by the PortugueseGentlemanof Elvas.7Seventh, and last, there were the Renaissancepictures of the peo-ple of the New Worldand there were the people themselves broughtback to be displayed. Nearly every sixteenth-century collection orsummaryof voyages had certain illustrations - gigantic warriorsbend-ing Greekbows, nude nymphs, Europeanizedlandscapes.The eye-witness drawingsby John Whiteand Le Moyne were placed in De Bryin 1590 and thereafter became the bases for idealized pictures whichgave the Indians the appearanceand nature of ancient GreeksorSpartans.8Such pictures did not always conform to the appearanceof the real natives who were sometimes seen in Europe - almostevery voyager to the New Worldtreacherously capturedone or moreto bringback as slaves, to be presented to Frobisher'sHenry VII orRibaud'sQueen, to be Europeanized,to dance on village greens onfeast days, to die far from home.9It was, then, a changing,distorted, paradoxicalNew World whichentered and affected Renaissance literature.To suggestthe extent ofthat influence, let us look at two important literarythemes and thensample the various literary genres.Avoiding the Noble Savage,Paradise,and certain other themes sooften and sometimes so beautifully handledby recent writers,10letus turn first to the theme of the Cruelty of the Spaniards n the New

World.From the earliest discoveries in the WestIndies, greed forWesterngold and condescension toward Indian "ignorance"of itsvalue led to demands impossible to fulfill, bloody retaliations by thenatives, and the rise of the extreme form of that "anti" imageof theNew World man as impossible to Christianizeor civilize; that is, thejudgment stated by Dr. Chanca on Columbus's second voyage, "theirdegradationis greaterthan that of any beast."11 But also, from thevery beginning, there was a vigorous defense of the natives and anattack on their mistreatment oy the Spaniards,all coming of coursefrom Spain itself. After Montesinos' famous sermonof 1511 defend-ing the Indians, the transplantedItalian Pietro Martire12over and overassertedthat certain of them "seeme to live in the goulden worlde,"and he openly and shamefacedly condemned atrocities such as thoseof that butcher governorof Panama,Pedro Ariasde Avila. When thedebate grew heated over the nature of the Indians, with writers like



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Ovie'doand Quevdo provingtheir sub-human natureby resortingtoAristotle,13 Bartolom de las Casas came forwardand, from about1519 to his death, remained the chief spokesmanagainst Spanishmis-treatment. At least in theory his campaignwon out, for in 1537 PopePaulIll's famous Bull made the Indiansofficially human, and in 1552-53 Las Casaswas able to publish tracts which were not only inflam-matory and exaggeratedbut which went all over Europe to give com-fort and aid to Spain's political and religious enemies. In spite of thefact that saintly Spanishpriests devoted their lives to the Americans,in spite of the fact that debates between Las Casasand Sepulveda in-spired "admirable aws,"14in spite of the fact that Spain led the wayin exposing its own sins, the myth of Spanishcruelty in the New Worldbecame one of the strongest myths in history.15But that cruelty, of whateveramount, had been reported and othernations, especially Englandand France,adopted it with enthusiasm.As a theme in Renaissanceliterature, it is reflected best in the drama,which became so important in Europe only after LasCasasand hiswords were well known everywhere,and since Englandand Spainwere rivalsin producinggood dramaas well as good navigators,theirplays expose the cruelty most often. The first to do so apparentlycame less than five years after Las Casas'fiery pamphlets in 1557 inToledo. It was called Las Cortesde la Muerte (The Assembly of Death)and is a kind of morality play in which the body is a character,angelsare personified, and the author laments Spanish lust for gold and theresultingcruel treatment of innocent Indians.16Also in the moralitytradition is Lope de Vega's well known El Nuevo Mundo descubiertopor Colon, in which, along with Columbusand Indians, Providence,Idolatry, Religion, and the Devil argueas charactersthe rightsandwrongs, the advantagesand disadvantagesof the discovery of Ameri-ca. But, as in a greatnumber of his plays which deal with America,Lope's El Nuevo Mundo reflects his pride in Spanish conquests andcolonizing achievements even as it laments the evil that went withthe good, a fact true also of Tirso de Molina'spatriotic trilogy aboutthe Pizarros.17No Englishdramatists or poets, however, and there were manywho dealt with the theme, found the good. Thomas Heywood in atleast three plays, including // You Know Not Me, You Know nobodie (1605), made the Spanish "tyrannous, cruel, lascivious,"18while Robert Greene in Spanish Masquerado(1589), inspiredbythe destruction of the Armadaand finding evidence not only inLasCasasbut in Castanheda'saccount of De Soto's expedition,showed the Spanish hunting Indians with dogs, cutting off theirhands, tearingthem with horses.19It was a theme often found inEnglandoutside the drama,of course, as in John Donne's simile:



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And if they stand arm'd with seely honestie,With wishing prayers and neat integritie,Like Indians 'gainst Spanish hosts they be. 20The best known of all Englishtreatments of the theme is surelyDavenant's"opera" The Cruelty of the Spaniards n Peru (1658),written two years after what is perhapsthe most famous of all trans-lations of LasCasas,that by Milton's nephewJohn Phillips.21ByDavenant'stime, the cruelty of the Spaniardswas being regularlycontrastedwith the kindness and humanity of the French, like Car-tier and Champlain,or the good Protestant English,even after Puri-tan atrocities in New Englandand after the horrible aftermath of the1622 massacre n Virginia.So Davenantnot only has a spurioushis-tory of the Incas in his spectacle but concludes his conglomerateofspeeches, songs, dances, and acrobatics with Englishsoldiers heroic-ally arriving o save the natives of Mexico from the villainous Corts.By the time of Descartesand the Restoration of CharlesII, then,such pieces of literature had helped advertiseto Europe outside theIberianpeninsulathe horrors of Spanish conquest and colonization.A second theme, much more subtle, is that of the New World'spossible influence on the doctrine of progress.In spite of the argu-ment inJ.B. Bury's seminal book leadingto his thesis that the ideaof progressreally begins only with Descartes,22the more one readsRenaissancewriters the more one agreeswith HansBaronand others23that Humanismdid not slavishlyfollow the Greeksand Romans but,inspiredby the ancient greats, took pride in its own accomplishmentsand looked forward to still greaterones. At any rate, the notion ofprogressis obviously closely linked with the Quarrelof the Ancientsand Moderns and with the doctrine of ManifestDestiny, the formeroften considered late seventeenth-century, the other often considereddistinctively American. It is provocative to see how the New World,discovered simultaneously with ancient thought and letters, gave gi-gantic impetus to this complex of theories found everywhere inliterature.Very early in the sixteenth century, the discovery of America be-came a symbol of discovery and invention in generalas well as evi-dence to historiansof the New Worldthat their age had made ad-vancesover former ages. Pietro Martire(1533) is only one such earlyhistorianto point out that the ancients knew nothing, "as we do," ofthe New World.24Another, Gomara(1552), expressedpride in theway Spain had "improved"her colonies25 and more than once an-nounced that the moderns had gone beyond the Greeksand Romans;Granada(1582) pointed out that "in new lands there are discovereddaily new animals with new abilities and properties, such as haveneverbeen known . . .,"26 a thesis supported by his predecessor,the physician Monardes,and even more vigorously by Monardes'



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translator,Frampton.The Inca Garcilaso(1609) not only definedthree distinct stagesof development in the history of his peoplebut proudly assertedthat the exploits of De Soto surpassedthoseof the ancients.27 With countless witnesses such as these, one cansee why sixteenth-century geographers,philosophers, and readersscornedthe ancient and once honored Ptolemy as each new mapshowed him ever more wrong or why they attacked Aristotle longbefore Bacon did.The intellectual leadersof the sixteenth century knew and wereimpressedby Americaand what it meant. It would be easy to demon-stratethat More, Erasmus,and other Humanists,as well as reformerslike Luther, believed in progress,but it is appropriatehere to startwith that much admiredfriend of Erasmusand More,Juan LuisVives. Close to great geographicalas well as philosophical develop-ments, the SpaniardVives praisedthe giants of antiquity, but, hesaid, "they were men as we are, and were liable to be deceived andto err."28Furthermore,the ancients, he asserted,knew that futureages would rise to heights they did not know, for they "judgeditto be of the very essence of the humanrace that, daily, it shouldprogress n arts, discipline, virtueand goodness."29 Even more in-fluential throughout Europe wasJean Bodin, closely followed byhis contemporary disciple Le Roy. Bodin, in more than one book,rejectedall golden ages and the theory of man's degenerationandended by showing that his age had not only invented gunpowder,the compass, and printingbut also discoverednew worlds and cir-cumnavigatedthe globed Precededby thinkers like these andpraisingwith so many of his immediate ancestors the geographicaldiscoveries as well as the three wonderful inventions of the pre-vious hundredyears, Bacon developed out of Bruno the then strik-ing theory that the moderns are the true ancients because they arethe result of the agingof creativity and experience. And not onlylike the others was Bacon impressedwith the opening up of aNew Worldby means of the compass and gunpowder;he echoedAcosta in believing the Andes taller than any Old Worldmountains,31praised Spain's far-sightedactivity in developing its dominions,pointed out that the Aztecs and Incas were examples of progressinAmerica,32 and, exactly like Bruno and others, compared his ownbent to intellectual discovery with the great discovery of Columbus.33Withsuch New Worldhistoriansand Old Worldthinkers to in-spirethem, belletristic writersof the Renaissanceeverywherere-flect the idea of progressand the worth of the moderns, some refer-ringto the New Worlddirectly or to the theories of thinkers influ-enced by the New World. Even as Magellanwas sailingthrough hisStrait, Torres Naharro(1517) was comparinghis new book to a shipsetting sail to discover new worlds.34Just as Du Bellay's famous



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Dfense (1549) is nothing if not an illustration of a belief in prog-ress, his friend Ronsard,who often turned to America for imageandtheme,35 believed with their friend Le Roy in some kind of forwardmovement in a designed world - 'Toute chose a sa fin et tend aquelque bt" ("Hymne de Yt"). Across the Channeland a bitlater, Spenser, like his teacher Ronsard, employed the New Worldin imageand metaphor and believed in "a goal of perfection."36But when, inconsistently, he arguedin the "Mutabilitie"cantos thatNature had arrangedall things neatly only to haveMutabilitie comealong and destroy the order, his friend Hervey wrote that famousletter reprimandinghim for such a philosophy because "Natureher-self is changeable"and, Hervey said, becauseJean Bodin was right inbelieving the present better than the past. One of the best examplesof a great Renaissance creative writer'sbelief in progressis BenJon-son, whose Timber;or Discoveries shows how closely he dependedon the Vives passageswe started with.The entire subject needs another book-length study, one thatwould relate Progressand the Ancient -Moderndebate to the theoryof ManifestDestiny. Forjust as the Spanishbelieved they were therace chosen to improve, Christianize,and profit from the New World,as holy papal bulls even agreed, so French and Englishbelieved theywere not just building empires in America but following a vision,carryingout a mandate from God or his earthly representative.37Earlyin the sixteenth century, the SpanishHumanist Perezde Olivasaw a westward course of empire with Spain as God's agent,38 EdwardHayes, with Gilbert in Newfoundland, arguedthat "God had reserved"the New Worldnorth of Florida "to be reduced unto Christian civilitieby the Englishnation," a belief held later by many early colonizers ofVirginia.3*EvenJohn Donne, in spite of all his poems on the decayof man or of the loved one, preachedthat famous send-off sermon in1622 in which he told the prospective colonists that they were leavingto make "this island ... a bridge,a gallery to the new [World]."40Such visions of a Passageto India, whether derived from good or evilor mixed motives, led smoothly to Jefferson's westward-looking eyesand Monroe's manifesto.There are countless such themes given impetus by news out of theNew Worldthat could be traced through Europeanliterature,but letus also try the great literarygenres, although we can pass over drama-late startingand already mentioned - and most lyric poetry, which,especially from the Plaide to Dryden's "Ode to Charleton,"has somany allusions to and metaphorsdepending on a knowledge of theNew World.41There are, however, two types of lyric poems uniquelyrelated to America - the promotion poems like Drayton's famous Odeand the Bon Voyage or "puffing" poems such as those of Ronsard,de Baf, andJodelle for Thevet's book on America, and Chapman's



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LITERATURE AND DISCOVERY 107for Keymis on his expedition to Guiana.42There is also a wholebody of satiricalliteratureinspiredby new geographicaldis-coveries, from Brant'sNarrenschiff (1494) to the ElizabethanplayEastwardHo! to Bishop Hall'sridicule of lying travelers.43Yet an-other genre is the dialogue or colloquy, important in university train-ing and high on the best seller lists.44 Erasmus,easily the great namehere, more than once turned to the New World for inspiration, as in"TheWell-to-doBeggars,"where the conversationdwells on culturalrelativismby way of comparingnaked Americanswith clothed Euro-peans.45There are other genres that need more attention, however.One of these is the prose romance. The relation between the ro-mance and the exploration of the New Worldis both complex andintriguingbecause the influence went west as well as east. Until thetime of Don Quixote, Spain, even more than other countries, avidlyreadthese romances and was inspiredto seek the marvels describedin them. The popularity of Amadis and Palmerin from 1508 onparalleledthe popularity of the letters of Columbusand Vespuccior the Decades of Martire,andjust as the romances told of giants,Amazons, dwarfs, Seven Cities, El Dorados, or fountains of youth,the "real"accounts brought back stories of giants, golden idols,and enchanted places masalia. The educated Corts readAmadisto his soldiersaround the campfire,Spaniardswere easily per-suadedto join expeditions to an America that might be the idealland for valorousaction as well as rich treasure,and descriptionsof Mexico City or Perusent home to Spain often sounded like theliteraryromances themselves. IrvingLeonard46has told the storywell, concentratingon early reports about islandsof Amazons andon Caravajal's ecord of Orellana'svoyage down the great rivernamed for the women warriorshe had to fight. In 1510 Montalvopublished the fifth volume of his Amadis cycle, which was namedSergasde Esplandidnand went through six Spanisheditions duringthe century. In it is told the story of Calafia,queen of a race ofAmazons who reside on a craggyislandnamed " 'California,'"celebrated for "its abundanceof gold andjewels."47 All of thisliterature,but none more than Esplandidn,had an incalculableinfluence on the exploits of Cortes and the Pizarros.For example,Corts' fourth letter to the Kingtells how an expedition he sentout looking for Amazons and gold returnedwith the excitingnews that ten days beyond their stopping point, the soldiers weretold, there was an island rich in treasure and inhabited by women.This "island,"or one like it, decorates most maps of the late six-teenth and seventeenth centuries, for not until after 1700 werecartographers inally convinced that lower Californiawas apeninsula.48Closely related to the romance, especially in the Renaissance,



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108 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIESis the epic, and while it has often been remarkedthat the greatepics of the time looked back to Greece and Rome or were reallyromances in poetry like OrlandoFurioso (1516), in one of theseepics, GerusalemmeLiberata (1575), Tasso proudly announced thediscovery of Americaby his countryman: "Un uom liguria,"thegentle guide answered the wondering knight Ubaldo, "avrardimento/All' incognito corso esporsi in prima."That is to say, she went on, "Tuspiegherai,Colombo, a un novo polo/ Lontano si le fortunate antenne,/Ch'apena seguir con gli occhi il volo/ La Fama ch'ha mille occhi emille penne."49And Tasso s friend Stiglianeapparently thought ofwritingan epic to honor Columbus.50Stigliane may havegiven up,but others did not, at least in Englandand Spain, for in those coun-tries there were long poems inspired by the New World.None is asgood, however, as Comoes' Os Lusiadas (1572) celebratingda Gamaand Portugal.Of the many poems about America that have epicqualities, the best is undoubtedly Ercilla's LaAraucaria,publishedin three parts (1569, 1578, 1589) and written by a soldier-statesmanwho was in Perufor the warshe described in his poem.51 Ercilla, im-pressednot only by the Montesinos-LasCasas tradition but by hisown experiences, treats the AraucanianIndians sympathetically intheir heroic struggleagainst Spanishdomination. In ottava rima, thepoem provides local color, epic debates and a vision, much blood-shed, and reminiscencesof scenes in Homer, Virgil,and Lucan. WhileVoltaire did not like its emphasison war, neither did he approveofthe Iliad, and he even found a speech by the cacique Colacola inErcilla'ssecond canto superiorto anything in Homer.52La Araucariamay be the best epic in the Spanish language.53There is no Englishepic of the period, if we stop before Milton,unless we count The Faerie Queene, but there were long poems writ-ten in Englanddealing with America which come close. One was bya lad of eighteen at Exeter named WilliamKidley, who in 1624 usednot only RichardHawkins'own Observationsbut information col-lected from other sources to tell a patriotic tale of Britain'sgreatex-ploits in the New World.54A generation earlier,another young man,Stephen Parmenius,came to Englandfrom Hungary,bringingwithhim a fine classicaleducation gained on the Continent. In England,he studied navigationat Oxford with RichardHakluyt the younger,became enthusiastic about the colonizing venturesdiscussed allaroundhim, wrote a kind of epic published in 1582, the year ofHakluyt's first propagandisticcollection, the Divers Voyages,andthen, havingconvinced himself with his poem, sailed with Gilbertto Newfoundland and, like Gilbert, lost his life in the cold NorthAtlantic. The poem, in Latin hexameters, since ParmeniusknewEnglishmost inadequately, has been retranslated(1972) in asplendidvolume.55 Parmeniusbegins with fulsome praiseof God,



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Queen Elizabeth, and Gilbert, considers the origins of the Ameri-can Indians, most idealistically hopes to witness their conversion,longs to write the epic of "the rise of the new race," attacks Spain'scruelty and Europe s lust for gold, employs copious classical allu-sions, shows the influence of Virgiland Camo"M,atalogues the ex-ploits of Britishvoyagersto the New World,and ends with a prayerto God, Elizabeth, and Britainthat they will gently civilize the sav-ages andjoin them with the English in a great expansionist andprogressivemovement. His is one of the most attractive poemsabout the New World,even though it has had no influence his-torically.One of the chief influences in belles lettres that came with thediscovery of America is the impetus given by that discovery totravel literature and pseudo-travelliterature. Of course, the earlyRenaissancehad its MarcoPolos and Mandevillesto help, and thenthere was Pliny, whose unnaturalnaturalhistory affected the bestand worst of travelbooks until well after 1700; but after 1492voyage literature not only became more popular with printingand with a New Worldto write about but it became better. Thetravel letters of two Italians, Columbusand Vespucci,56 for exam-ple, are both personaland objective, marvelousand yet realistic,a combination that would make such books more and more fasci-natingto Europeanreaders.Columbus could be objective in report-ing his sailingsand landingsand troubles and yet insert a story ofmeeting a largeIndian boat off Mexico filled with people dressedin dyed cotton, or Vespucci might tell of women warriorsand ahorriblecannibalisticorgy and record personal impressionsofSouth America, where feathers were more valuablethan preciousmetals. A Spaniardsuch as Alonso Enrquez de Guzman, settingout for America in 1534, might have little on flora and fauna butmuch about his own experiences.57A different kind of travelbook,the letters of Corts to his king, or BernaiDiaz's account of theconquest of Mexico,58 will often be as personal, but it will alsobecome invaluablein every way to historiansof Mexico and, atthe same time, be as grippingas any novel. Such books will lead toothers, to, for example, Ralegh'sGuiana,69which may be the bestof real Renaissancetravels, comparableto the best of the eighteenthand nineteenth centuriesand a favorite, for example, of Defoe. Bythe end of the Renaissance,then, Europe had learned to write andread huge quantities of travel literatureabout the New World.Close to the real travelbook, so close in fact that often one can-not separatethem, is the imaginaryvoyage, which, inspiredin greatpartby the many actual travelaccounts of the New World,grew tomaturity in the Renaissance.These imaginaryvoyages could, infact, pretend to be real, as did La Vidade Marcos de Obregn, by



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110 COMPARATIVEITERATURETUDIESVicente Espinel, who borrowed information and dates from Sar-miento's west-side visit to Magellan'sStrait and then included whatall readersagree is "geografia fantastica;"60or an anonymous French". . . lettre envoye de la Nouvelle-France,par le sieur de Combes"(1609), which takes a fictional person to Canadaby borrowingfactsfrom Champlainand inventingothers, carriageson wheels, for exam-ple.61Or they could be completely plagiarizedand intend to deceive,as in the case of Roberval'sfamous pilot Jean Alphonse and hisCosmographie, aken from a Spanishbook of 1519 by FernandezdeEnciro.62Or they could consist of marvelousadventuresnot all ofwhich were intended to be taken as real, as the laterbooks oi Panta-gruel, for example, which draw heavily on accounts of the NewWorld,especially on those written by and told about Jacques Cartier,who lived in and sailed from Rabelais'Saint-Malo.63Such pseudo-travelbooks would increasein numberafter the Renaissanceandlead to many dozens in the eighteenth century.And finally there are the Utopias. What can one say briefly? wThat after Plato, Utopias were normally celestial while, after Ameri-ca was discovered, they became earthly duringthe Renaissance,onlyto returnoften to outer space, or inner space, in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. That in the Renaissance,from More (1516) toCampanella(1623) and Bacon (1624, published later), Utopias wereplaced often in the Westand employed facts gleaned from writersabout America. More'sHythloday accompanied Vespucci, crossedSouth America with other travelers,and sailed west to Utopia,where, as with Mart re's Indians, no one distinguishedbetween meumand tuum, land is held in common, gold is despised, there is a pluralityof religions, and, as with Vespucci, each home has behind it a beauti-ful gardenopen to all. Campanella,as Baudet says, "based much ofhis ideal state ... on what he thought he knew of the Incas."65AndBacon, who in the Novum Organumhad thought the travelsof theancients "no more than suburbanexcursions" when comparedwiththe voyages of Columbusand Magellan, n the New Atlantis oftencites the New WorldhistorianAcosta as well as the Inca Garcilaso,shows a great interest in theories about ancient Atlantis as America,is one of the first important thinkers to ponder the question of theJewish or other possible origins of human life in the New World,andof all the statues in his famous house of Salomon names one, that ofColumbus,a fact that points not just to Benzoni, Ramusio, andOvido, all of whom had suggestedthat statues of Columbusbeerected, but also to the long sixteenth-century tradition of usingColumbus,as Lope said, as a symbol for "man'sunquenchablespiritof discovery."66It is perhapsthis spirit of discovery, of experiment, of innova-tion, that is one of the markedcharacteristicsof Renaissancebelles



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LITERATURE AND DISCOVERY 11 1

lettres - from Erasmusand Luther, to Rabelaisand the Plaide,to the new drama,to Bruno and Bacon,just as it is of the earlyhistoriansof America and of the daringsailors,greedy gold seekers,faithful or cruelgovernment officials, and saintly priests who actuallywent to the New World.And perhapsas important for us to notenow is that the influence of the New Worldon Renaissance literatureis often no greaterthan the influence of that literature on the NewWorld tself, its conquest and civilization. Not only, for example, didthe literarythemes of progress,science, Spanish cruelty, the earthlyParadise- all so indebted to Columbus,Magellan,and America -give back that influence to explorers and colonists in VirginiaandSouth America, and not only did the chivalric romances receive en-couragementfrom and yet aid exploration, but More's Utopia, whichlooked to the WesternWorldand its Europeanvisitors,became a sortof second Bible to certainof those Spanish saints who hoped toChristianize he Indians. LasCasastried to create Utopias, especiallyin Venezuela, but Vasco de Quiroga,a bishop andjurist, actuallybuilt communities in Mexico "pattern[ed] from the good republicproposed by Thomas More," its family and village plan, its electivesystem, its hospitals.67It may be true, as Atkinson has shown forFrance,68that in the sixteenth century western Europe publishedmore books about the Old Worldthan about the New, and certainlythere were more love sonnets than embarkationodes, more playsabout EnglishHenrysand Richards than about Spanish Pizarros,but the New World,with its changing,challengingimage, its canni-bals and Noble Savages,its elusive waterwaysand treasures,its Az-tecs and Incas, its villainsand saints, its heroes and hopes - all thisNew World,without hundredsof yearsof written tradition, stillattracted and inspiredalmost every writer, certainly every literarygenre, after Columbus returnedwith his stirringnews.

PERCY G. ADAMS University of TennesseeNOTES

1.HiramHaydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York: Scribner's, 1950), p. 4.2. For only a few of the eye-witness accounts of the New World which were widelyread and often reprinted in collections in many languages, see Select Documents Illus-trating the Four Voyages of Columbus, trans, and ed. CecilJane, 2 vols. (London: Hak-luyt, 1930); The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci trans. Clements R. Markham(London:Hakluyt, 1894); Sir Walter Raleigh, The Discoverie . . . of Guiana, ed. V.T. Harlow^Lon-don: Argonaut, 1928; 1st ed. 1596). Add to these the accounts of Balboa, of Corts, ofVerra ano; of the French in South America and Florida - Andr Thevet, Jean Ribaut,Jean de Lery, the artist Le Moyne, Jacques Cartier,Champlain, the earlyJesuits in Canada;of the early seventeenth-century Dutch navigators - Van Noort, Linschoten, Spilbergen,etc.; as well as many others, the German Hans Staden (1537), e.g. And then include suchcollections as Francanzano da Montalboddo, Paesi novamente retrovati (Vicenza, 1507)[a very popular collection reprinted in Italy alone five times by 1521] ; Simon Grynaeus,Novus Orbis (Basle, 1532) [ed. Johann Huttich with introd. by Sebastian Munster;hencethe collection is often given Minister's name (in Latin; used by Rabelais, e.g.)] ; PietroMartired'Anghiera, De Orbe Novo (Basle, 1533); G.B. Ramusio, RaceoIta di navagazioni



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et viaegi (Vicenza, 1550-59); La Historia del Mondo Nuovo (Vicenza, 1565);Fernandez de Ovido, Historia general de las Indias (Sevilla, 1535); Girolamo Benzoni,Jose de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Sevilla: Ivan de Leon, 1590)[trans. 1598 into French; 1604 into English; trans, for Hakhiyt Society by ClementsR. Markham, 1880, Series 1, Vols. 60-61] ; Gregorio Garcia, Origen de los Indios delNuevo Mundo (Valencia, 1607); Garcilaso de la Vega (el Inca), Royal Commen-taries of Peru, trans. Clements R. Markham(London: Hakluyt, 1869-71 ), in 2 vols,[also trans. H.V. Livermore (Austin, 1966); first Span. ed. 1609 at Lisbon] ; Fran-cisco Lopez de Gomara,Historia general de las Indias y conquista de Mexico (Sara-gossa, 1552). The first English collection was of parts of three works, trans. RichardEden in 1 555 and ed. Edward Arber as The First ThreeEnglish Books on America(Birmingham, 1885); Richard Hakluyt, the last great English editor of voyages inthe sixteenth century, made many translations and collected many notes and travelbooks, his Principall Navigations appearingbetween 1589 and 1600. For Germany,see Paul H. Baginsky, "German Works Relating to America 1493-1800," Bulletinof the New YorkPublic Library, 42 (1938), 909-18; 43 (1939) [8 bibliographies] ;44 (1940), 39-56. These individual voyages and multi-volume collections, whichcomprise only a part of the list that one could, or should, name, indicate the popu-larity of Renaissance works about the New World- in spite of G. Atkinson's well-known conclusion that "entre 1480 et 1609, deux fois plus d'impressions de livressur les pays de l'Empire turc . . . que sur les deux Amriques" appeared in France.See his Les Nouveaux horizons de la renaissancefranaise (Paris:Droz, 1935), p. 10.3. See especially Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance(Bloomington, London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1969) and his bibliography and notes;the first chap, of H.M.Jones, O Strange New World(New York: Viking, 1964; 1sted. 1952); A.B. Giamatti, The Earthly Paradiseand the Renaissance Epic (Prince-ton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966) and his excellent bibliographies; and, for onlyone other, Henri Baudet, Paradise on Earth, trans. Elizabeth Wentholt (New Havenand London: Yale Univ. Press, 1965).4. For these and other marvels see Percy G. Adams, Travelersand TravelLiars1660-1800 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1962), Chap. IIespecially; Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (London: Dent, 1926), VII, 49; LouisB. Wright,ed., The Elizabethans' America (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press,1965), p. 54, p. 43; Jones, Chaps. I, II; Robert R. Cawley, The VoyagersandElizabethan Drama (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1938), pp. 273 ff. especially;Cawley, Unpathed Waters(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1940). These booksand others depend on visitors to America from Columbus and Vespucci to Piga-fetta, perhaps even more on the editors and commentators who magnified theirmarvels (e.g., see Jones, p. 30 and Adams, pp. 19 ff.)5. Levin, p. 62.6.Monardes, Primeray segunda y tercerapartes de la historia medicinal . . .de nuestras Indias occidentales . . . (Sevilla, 1574), and Frampton, "trans.," Joy-full Newes out of the Newe Founde World(London, 1577). See Stephen Gaslee'sed. of Frampton, 2 vols. (London, 1925), and H.M.Jones, pp. 401-2, for moreinformation on Monardes, Frampton, and their popularity.7.Hakluyt, Virginia richly valued, by the description of the main land ofFlorida, her next neighbor Written by a Portugall Gentleman of Elvas . . .and translated out of Portuguese by Richard Hakluyt" (London: Kyngston, 1609).In Peter Force, ed., Tractsand Other Papers (Washington: Force, 1846), IV, 1-132.8. See Paul Hulton and D.B. Quinn, The American Drawings of John White,1577-1590, 2 vols. (London, 1964); Stefan Lorant, ed., The New World:The FirstPictures of America made by John White and Jacques Le Moyne and engraved byTheodore De Bry (New York, 1946); and, for a good edition of documents relatingto Florida, including the engravingsof Le Moyne done in England years after he wasin America, CharlesE. Bennett, compiler, Settlement of Florida (Gainesville: Univ.of Florida Press, 1968).

9. The accounts of Europeans capturing Americans extend into the hundreds.See, for Frobisher, e.g., Boies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance(Cambridge:HarvardUniv. Press, 1952), p. 176; and for Carder'scaptives see ArthurA. Tilley, "Rabelais and Geographical Discovery," in Studies in the French Renais-sance (New York: Barnesand Noble, 1968; first ed. 1922), p. 50.10. E.g., Levin, Giamatti, Baudet, Jones, etc.



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1 l.Dr. Chanca, in Columbus (see note 2), I, 70.12. See his The Decades of the New World(Ann Arbor: Univ. Microfilms, 1966),17a especially, but see also pp. 208, 211, 212.13. For three of many good treatments of this fascinating conflict, see Henry R.Wagner(with the collaboration of Helen Rand Parish) The Life and Writingsof Bar-tolom de las Casas (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1967), pp. 53, 56, etc.;and Lewis Hanke, Estudios sobre Fray Bartolom de las Casas . . (Caracas, 1968), aswell as his Bartolom de las Casas (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1952).14. Otis H. Green, Spain and the Western Tradition (Madisonand Milwaukee: Univ.of Wisconsin Press, 1965), p. 90.15. For more on this myth see Green, Wagner,Wright,Jones, J.H. Elliott, The OldWorldand the New 1492-1650 (Cambridge:The Univ. Press, 1970), and the works ofLewis Hanke, e.g., The First Social Experiments in America: A Study in the Develop-ment of Spanish Indian Policy in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge:The Univ. Press,1935).16. By Micael de Caravajaland Luis Hurtado (Toledo, 1557). See Valentin de Pedro,America en las letras espanolas del sigh de oro (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana,1954), pp. 45-65.17. See Pedro, 87-92. For much more on Lope and America, see Pedro, pp. 82-1 11,and Marcosa Monnigo, America en el teatro de Lope de Vega (Buenos Aires, 1946).For Tirso de Molina (fray Gabriel Tllez) - best known for his early play on DonJuan - and his trilogy about the Pizarros,see Pedro, e.g., pp. 1 33-48.18. See Cawley, Unpathed Waters,p. 134.19.Cawley, The Voyagersand Elizabethan Drama, pp. 384-87.20. In "To Sir Henry Wotten."21.John Phillips, The Tearsof the Indians (London, 1656).22.J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York: Dover Pubs., 1955; first ed. 1932).23. Baron, " The Querelle of the Ancients and the Moderns as a Problem for Renais-sance Scholarship," Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), 3-22. See also Haydn,p. 521 ; Atkinson, p. 253; Daniel Mnager, Introduction la vie littraire du XVIe sicle(Paris:Bordas, 1968); J.H. Elliott, pp. 11-12; ClarenceJ. Blacken, Traces on the RhodianShore (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967); and Eugenio Garin, L'Educazione inEurope, 1400-1600 (Bari, 1957).24.Martire, p. 215.25. Quoted by Green, p. 78.26. Ibid., p. 42.27. Ibid., p. 30.28. From Vives' De DiscipUnis,which was re-edited in England in 1612. Quoted byBaron, p. 14.29. Ibid.30. Bodin, Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionenu Quoted in Baron, pp. 10-11.31. See Cawley, Voyagers*p. 327.32. Ibid., p. 347.33.Howard B. White,Peace Among the Willows (The Hague: MartinusNijhoff, 1968),p. 130;J.G. Crowther, Francis Bacon (London: Cresset, 1969), pp. 112-13, 106-7.34. Green, pp. 37-38.35. See Elizabeth Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold (Cambridge:The Univ.Press, 1968).36. These are the words of H.S.V. Jones, A Spenser Handbook (New York: Crofts,1930), p. 309, who supports them with good evidence.37. On Las Casas vision, e.g., see Hanke, Las Casas,p. 33; IrvingA. Leonard, Booksof the Brave (New York: Gordian Press, 1964), p. 7; and Wagner,p. 7.38.J.H. Elliott, p. 73.39. Wright, p. 15.40. Ibid., p. 14.41. See, e.g., Armstrongon Ronsard; for John Donne's allusions to America, see Caw-ley, Voyagers and Unpathed Waters;Winfred Schleiner, The Imagery of John Donne*sSermons (Providence: Brown Univ. Press, 1970), especially p. 91 ;and Milton Rugoff,Donne's Imagery (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), especially pp. 137 ff.42. For much on promotion literature, see H.M.Jones, O Brave New World,but,better still, his seminal essay "The Colonial Impulse," Proc. Amer. Phil Soc, Vol. 90,no. 2(1946), pp. 131-61.



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1 14 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

43. See, e.g., Edwin H. Zeydel, "Sebastian Brant and the Discovery of America,'*JEGP, 42 (1943), 10-11.44.Erasums*Colloquies were the most popular item in Cambridgebook stores in theearly sixteenth century. See also his "A Marriage n Name Only," which is concernedwith one of his favorite subjects, the pox, or syphilis, supposedly brought back to Eur-ope by Columbus; or Vives* "El Convite** nd "Los Habladores" (Pedro, pp. 39-40, formore).45.The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. C.R. Thompson (Chicago: Univ. of ChicagoPress, 1965), pp. 203-1 7, 401-1 2.46. For Leonard, see note 37; look especially at pp. 16-64. One should add to Leonardthe well-known stories of fighting women told by Vespucci (see note 2) on his first voyage.47. Leonard, p. 39.48. For example, see the map of North America in Chtelain*sAtlas Historique (Amster-dam, 1719), showing a huge island, called "California,** ff the relatively unknown westerncoast.49.Tasso, La GerusalemmeLiberata, XV, xxxi-xxxii. ["A knight of Genes shall havethe hardiment/ Upon this wondrous voyage first to wend/ . . . Thy ship, Columbus, shallher canvas wing/ Spread o*er that world that yet concealed lies.**Tasso, Jerusalem De-livered, trans. Edward Fairfax (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1962, pp. 380-81] . Jones, p. 400, points out that not until 1581 would Columbus become the subjectof a "major** oem, De navagatione c. Columbi libri quattuor, by Lorenzo Gambara ofBrescia.50. Gilbert Chinard,L'Exotisme amricain dans la littraturefranaise au XVIe sicle(Paris: LibrairieHachette, 1911), p. 223.51. The standard edition of the Araucaria s in five vols., d. Jos Toribio Medina(Santiago de Chile, 1910-18). See also Alonso de Ercilla, La Araucaria(selecci6n), intro-duction y notas de Juan Love uck, segunda edidon (Santiago de Chile: Empresa Editora

Zig-Zig, 1962), with its bibliography, as well as Julio Caillet-Bois, Antisis de La Araucaria(Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de America Latina S.A., 1967). A recently re-discoveredand published English translation of about 1600 is The Histori of Araucana, introd. andnotes by Frank Pierce (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1964). For more on theRenaissance Spanish-American epic and long poem, see F. Rand Morton, Notes on theHistory of a Literary Genre; the Renaissance Epic in Spain and America (Mexico, 1962),and Pedro (note 16).52. See Voltaire's Essai sur la posie pique.53. Leonard, p. 110, is not the only one to think it so.54.Cawley, Unpathed Waters,pp. 147-48.55. The New Found Land of Stephen Parmenius. The life and writings of a Hungarianpoet, drowned on a voyage from Newfoundland, 1583. Ed. and trans, with commentariesby David B. Quinn and Neil M. Cheshire (Toronto and Buffalo: Univ. of Toronto Press,1972).56. See note 2.57. See J.H. Elliott, p. 20, on Guzman.58.Hernando Corts, The Letters ofHernando Corts, d. J. BayardMorris (London:Broadway Travellers, 1928); and Bernai Diaz del Castillo, The TrueHistory of the Con-quest of New Spain, ed. and trans. A.P. Mandslay, five vols. (London: Hakluyt, 1908-16).Add to these fascinating volumes others listed in, e.g., Penrose, pp. 335.59. For Ralegh, see note 2.60. Pedro, pp. 112-13.61. For "le sieur de Combes,*'see Atkinson, pp. 311-12.62.SeeTilley, pp. 46-49.63. Ibid., 51-52 especially. Much could be added to this brief discussion of imaginaryor pseudo-voyage literature, e.g., Thomas Lodge's A Margarite of America (London,1596) with its game - to become standard - of Lodge's receiving his MS. from a priestin Santos, Brazil;or Anthonie Knivet, with Cavendishin South America, returning towrite a fanciful account (see Adams, pp. 24-30).64. The bibliography for Utopias is massive. See, e.g., for Utopias in general and forfamous Renaissance Utopias in particular, H.W. Donner, Introduction to Utopia (London:Sidgwick and Jackson; Uppsala; Almqvist and Wiksells, 1945); G.E. Dermenghem, ThomasMore et les utopistes de la renaissance (Paris, 1927); R.W. Chambers,Thomas More (Lon-don: Cape, 1927); Frederick R. White, d., Famous Utopias of the Renaissance (NewYork: Hendricks House, 1955); Edward L. Surtz, S.J., The Praise of Wisdom,A Com-



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mentary on the Religious and Moral Backgrounds of Saint Thomas More's "Utopia"(Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1957); Howard B. White, Peace Among the Willows. ThePolitical Philosophy of Francis Bacon (see note 33); J.G. Crowther (note 33); J.H. Hex-ter, More s Utopia. The Biography of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1952);L. Spraguede Camp, Lost Continents (New York: Gnome Press, 1954); Lewis Mumford,The Story of Utopias (New York: Viking, 1962: first ed. 1922): Robert C. Elliott, TheShape of Utopia. Studies in a Literary Genre (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970).65. Baudet, p. 28.66.J.H. Elliott, pp. 11-12.67. For Las Casas,see note 13; for Quiroga, see Silvio Zavala,La 'Utopia de TomsMore en la Nueva Espdnay otros estudios (Mexico City, 1937); Zavala, "The AmericanUtopia of the Sixteenth Century," Huntington Library Quarterly, 10, no. 4 (Aug. 1947),337-47; Zavala,Sir ThomasMore in New Spain (London, 1955); F.B. Warren, Vasco deQuirogaand His Pueblo Hospitals of Santa F (Washington, 1963).68. See note 2 for Atkinson s conclusions.