The Cradle of Words: Language and Knowledge in the Spanish Empire - Couverture rigide

López Fadul, Valeria

 
9781421450216: The Cradle of Words: Language and Knowledge in the Spanish Empire
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 1421450216 ISBN 13 : 9781421450216
Editeur : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025

Synopsis

"In the sixteenth century, the conquest of the Americas exposed Spanish writers to previously unknown peoples and their many languages. The linguistic multiplicity of the new transatlantic empire presented enormous challenges both in terms of governance and religious conversion. Yet it also became a crucial resource for learning about the new territories' history, both natural and human. In The Cradle of Words, Valeria López Fadul reveals that Spanish scholars, missionaries, and administrators treated the empire's multiple tongues—both at home and abroad—as rich archives of local knowledge. These linguistic resources were exploited alongside the Americas' vast mineral and natural wealth and Indigenous labor. In the process, Spanish scholars made language itself into an object of historical inquiry. Using a wide variety of sources, López Fadul recreates the intellectual networks that crisscrossed Spain's overseas possessions and informed the imperial court's scholars. As linguistic information circulated among different kinds of scholars and local experts in Spain and in Spanish America, the history of language came to serve historical, political, and even legal arguments that were not originally linguistic in nature. By relying on varied methods like the collection of words, etymology, and the elaboration of linguistic genealogies, Spanish writers used the history of language to reconstruct the past, gain knowledge of nature, and explain the profound social transformations of their newly broadened world."

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À propos de l?auteur

Valeria López Fadul is an Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University. She is an Assistant Editor at History & Theory.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Johns Hopkins University Press
Date d'édition
2025
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1421450216
ISBN 13 
9781421450216
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
296
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
EU GPSR Authorised Representative
Contact@logoseurope.eu

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