Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Collard, Patrick

Titel

Oro y hambre en la primera Década de Pedro Mártir de Anglería

Ist Teil von

• Neophilologus, 2008-10, Vol.92 (4), p.617

Ort / Verlag

Dordrecht: Springer Nature B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

Bibliografía de la Literatura Española

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Chapters 4 and 5 of the first Decade, devoted to the four voyages (1492-1504) of Columbus, from the De orbe novo decades octo centre around the battle against hunger and its connection with the search for gold. Especially striking is the story of a famine which was caused by the natives themselves on the island Hispaniola as an ultimate weapon against the military superiority of the Spaniards, convinced as they were that only physical hunger among the intruders could be stronger than their hunger for gold. The author emphasises the measures taken by the Columbus brothers to meet the need for food. No less striking, from a narratological as well as a thematic perspective, are the references to cannibalism. In the information provided by the natives the cannibals indeed appear to be the frightening guardians of the place where gold is to be found. The last chapter deals with the victory of abundance over hunger. It contains an idyllic-propagandist description of the coming into existence of the colonial society on Hispaniola, by the import of metropolitan products, which are more profitable in the New World than in the Old one. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]