Williams' Use of History in _Peru_

• In Event: Epic and Revolutions: Helen Maria Williams' Poetics of Peru

Abstract

Helen Maria Williams has long been recognized by historians as the most important contemporary British chronicler of the French Revolution. Less well-known is how she adapted the work of fellow historians to re-imagine events in the Americas for a British and French audience. To compose Peru, she relied heavily on William Robertson’s popular History of America (1777) and Abbé Raynal’s Histoire Philosophique et Politique (1770), as well as on fictional accounts, including Françoise de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Peruvienne (1747) and Jean-François Marmontel’s Les Incas (1777). Williams explored the narrative possibilities of a poetic history, and Peru is original—and unprecedented—in its seamless blending of historical narrative with an imaginative and self-reflective verse to draw readers into a poetic space “Where fancy glows with all her native fire” (V: 7).
The work of Robertson and Raynal provided Williams with more than simply a chronicle of events within which to set her epic. They offered philosophical frameworks that challenged intellectual and political power structures with their revolutionary humanism. Within their pages, Peru became a case study in civilization, empire, commerce, class, and freedom. But Williams deliberately alters the historical record to serve her imaginative vision. For example, while her chronology follows that of Robertson, she omits an important fact, one clearly elaborated upon by both Robertson and Raynal. When Pizarro arrived in Peru, the “noble and harmonious Incans” she portrays were actually in a state of civil war. This paper explores how Williams reconfigures her source narratives chronicling the Peruvian past to advance her political and social aims for the future of Britain and France.

Author

• Paula R Feldman, University of South Carolina