Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulation of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulation of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds Galen Brokaw Keywords Galen Brokaw, Lisa Voigt, Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulation of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds, the New World, Colonialism, Spain, Captivity Voigt, Lisa . Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic: Circulation of Knowledge and Authority in the Iberian and English Imperial Worlds. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2009. 339 pp. Almost immediately after J. H. Elliott originally published his argument some forty years ago about the "blunted" impact of the Americas on Europe in the early modern period, other scholars began challenging this view. Indeed, Elliott himself [End Page 443] subsequently reconsidered his understanding of this relationship. Over the last several decades, one of the most interesting fields of research has focused precisely on the nature of this impact. Whether directly or indirectly, Elliott's argument set forth the terms of a research question that has informed numerous studies. In Elliott's original argument, "blunted impact" referred to the idea that the discovery of, or encounter with, the New World did not have the kind of immediate effect that one might assume in retrospect. One might say that research that argues against this thesis does not refute the "bluntness" of the impact, but rather demonstrates the true nature of the metaphor: although on the surface, the effects of blunt trauma are not as immediately obvious or dramatic, they are far more extensive and profound than more acute injuries. In fact, blunt trauma may cause injuries below the surface with long-lasting effects that are often difficult to identify. Such difficulties are precisely what continue to make this field so productive and interesting. Lisa Voigt's recent book, Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic, which is primarily a work of insightful textual analysis, does not take as its central concern the larger implications of the NewWorld impact, but her research emerges from, and is informed by, this field. Voigt broadens our understanding of the early modern period through an examination of the way captivity narratives function in the relationship between the Old and the New Worlds. The first chapter of Voigt's book explores the connection between accounts of Old World and New World captivity. She analyzes captivity narratives that appear in texts by Hans Staden, Cabeza de Vaca, Cervantes, Mascarenha, and the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The main point here is not that New World narratives were necessarily more significant than Old World ones, but rather that they participate in the discourse of captivity narratives in the same way that other texts do. Voigt uncovers a dialogic relationship between Old and New World narratives that has gone unnoticed in previous scholarship. Her insightful textual analyses address the central question of the chapter while remaining grounded in a contextualization of the debates about verisimilitude and artifice that were being played out in these texts as well. The second chapter focuses on the final section of Garcilaso's La Florida del Inca, which includes a number of captivity narratives. Voigt argues that Garcilaso both explicitly and implicitly draws a parallel between the condition of captivity and that of exile. His treatment of captivity is particularly important for the larger thesis of Voigt's book because Garcilaso is conscious of the dialogic processes through which captives and exiles pass. Chapter 3 turns to the creole project of Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán's Cautiverio feliz. This autobiographical text recounts the "happy captivity" of the author among the Mapuche of Chile in the seventeenth century. Pineda's account differs significantly from the others analyzed up to this point in that it conveys a [End Page 444] much more conciliatory perspective while avoiding the cultural transformations that characterize the earlier narratives of captivity. Pineda does not "go native" as do the Spanish captives in Florida. The mediating role evolves through his experience of captivity rather than as a result of an initial cultural transformation and a subsequent return to Spanish civilization. The fourth chapter moves to José de Santa Rita Durão's eighteenth-century Portuguese...