Juan Páez de Castro, Language, and the History of New World Natives and Ancient Iberians

• In Event: On the Value of Literary Arts and Artists in Early Modern Spain

Abstract

In his Method to Write History, Juan Páez de Castro urged Phillip II to support the writing of a universal history to encompass all of Spain’s realms, and including the testimonies of the most elderly and distinguished members of a community. This principle extended to the provinces of the New World where the lack of alphabetic writing made the reliance on oral traditions necessary. This paper examines a set of knowledge gathering projects initiated by Páez de Castro, or furthered by members of his scholarly circle, that relied on oral evidence to reconstruct historical traditions. It argues that as early as the 1550s, scholars working at the center of the empire, influenced by an influx of information and objects from the New World, were willing to use the Amerindians and their oral culture as a model to imagine Iberia’s own ancient inhabitants, their epics, and other poetic forms of remembrance.

Author

• Valeria Lopez Fadul, University of Chicago