Margarita Zamora – författare

Christopher Columbus authored over a hundred documents, many of them letters giving testimony on the Discovery to Isabela and Ferdinand. In this first book in English to focus specifically on these writings, Margarita Zamora offers an original analysis of their textual problems and ideological implications. Her comprehensive study takes into account the newly discovered "Libro Copiador," which includes previously unknown letters from Columbus to the Crown. Zamora examines those aspects of the texts that have caused the most anxiety and disagreement among scholars--questions concerning Columbus's destination, the authenticity and authority of the texts attributed to him, Las Casas's editorial role, and Columbus's views on the Indians. In doing so she opens up the vast cultural context of the Discovery. Exploring the ways in which the first images of America as seen through European eyes both represented and helped shape the Discovery, she maps the inception and growth of a discourse that was to dominate the colonizing of the New World.

The Comentarios reales de los incas, a classic of Spanish Renaissance prose narrative, was written by Garcilaso Inca de la Vega, the son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador. It is full of ideological tensions and apparent contradictions as Garcilaso attempts to reconcile a pagan new-world culture with the fervent Christian evangelism of the period of the discovery and conquest of America. This study of the Comentarios is original both in adopting the perspective of discourse analysis and in its interdisciplinary approach. Margarita Zamora examines the rhetorical complexities of the Comentarios, and shows how, in order to present Inca civilization to Europeans, Garcilaso turned to disciplines other than traditional historiography, and in particular to the linguistic strategies of humanist philology and hermeneutics. Professor Zamora reveals how Garcilaso's views of the Incas were shaped by the dual nature of his background, by his commitment to humanism and Christianity, by the expectations he had of his readers, and by the discursive practices of his time.