Conclusions

The history ofthe classical tradition in Latin America cannot be isolated from political history any more than in other parts of the world. Even after Spain and Portugal had yielded control of their vast dominions, the legacy of European antiquity continued to play a significant ideological and cultural role in the emergence of many new American nations: painting and sculpture that idealized indigenous subjects in specifically Hellenistic or Roman styles abounded in the mid-nineteenth century (Barajas Duran 2002).

There is no doubt that views of the Greco-Roman world had severely limited the conceptual horizons of the first missionaries and ethnographers who tried to make sense of the ‘‘New World,’’ affording them crude, if not utterly useless, frameworks and taxonomies for interpreting the alien cultures they encountered. But very rapidly, and for a much longer period of time, classical learning provided a means by which not only criollos, but also indigenous Americans, mestizos, and other groups have been able to articulate and celebrate their distinctive identities.

It has been argued that multiculturalism really began in the wake of the conquests of the Americas. Whether or not that was so, a cultural transition - from a stagnant Baroque version of the Renaissance to a kind of postmodernity - has certainly accompanied the Latin American nations’ political independence from Spain and Portugal (Lange-Churi(Sn and Mendieta 2001). That relatively rapid transition ensured that the continent’s dialogue with Greece and Rome remained essentially different from the classical legacy that had begun in Europe so much earlier, and had reached the United States so much later. As well as providing a new terrain for interdisciplinary enquiry, the cornucopia of classical traditions in the Hispanic or Latin American heritage could secure an important role for Greco-Roman studies in today’s academic curricula, which are naturally bound to reflect the cultural diversity of society at large (George 1998). And this cornucopia offers a powerful moral and methodological challenge to those European and North American scholars who still believe that there is only one classical tradition, and that it belongs to the Old World alone.

FURTHER READING

Although European perceptions of the Americas in relation to classical antiquity are often discussed (e. g., Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi [1992]; and Haase and Reinhold [1993]), only one overview of the classical traditions to have emerged within Latin America has been produced to date: Elliott [1988], an exhibition catalogue for the John Carter Brown Library.

However, treatments of mainstream Latin American culture and history indicate the centrality of the Greek and Roman legacy: e. g., Brading (1991); Canizares-Esguerra (2001); Henriquez Urena (1945); Leonard (1992); Paz (1988); and Gru-zinski (2002: 91-106). Some more specifically relevant studies of nations, individuals, and topics include Lupher (2003), Anaddn (1998, with an essay on pp. 8-31 by S. MacCormack, ‘‘The Incas and Rome’’), and Abbott (1996, which has a chapter on Diego Valades, pp. 41-59). My own forthcoming discussions in Haskell and Ruys, and in Andrews and Coroleu, will address various classical influences in New Spain.

The first chapter of Laird (2006a: 9-30) relates the development of classical humanism in Mexico from the Spanish conquest until the end of the colonial period.

For traditions of classical culture and education in nations that could not be treated fully, or even mentioned, in this chapter, see Castillo Didier (2003) on Chile, Eichmann Oehrli (2003) on Charcas-Bolivia, Herrera Zapien (2000) on Mexico, Miranda Cancela (2003) on Cuba, Nunez (2003) on Brazil, and Rivas Sacconi (1993) on Colombia. Sparisci Lovicelli (2003) is a short study of rhetoric in nineteenth-century Costa Rica.

There is a score for Torrej(Sn’s opera in the Bodleian Library in Oxford (Ms. Add. A.143, folios 170-93) in addition to the one in the Biblioteca Nacional in Lima (Ms. C 1469): for further background see Lohmann Villena (1945). Rene Clemencic had to rewrite some missing instrumental parts for the first world recording of the work, which was made by the Ensemble Vocal La Cappella and the Orchestre Baroque du Clemencic Consort in Italy in 1990 (Nuova Era 6936). A second recording by Andrew Lawrence-King’s Harp Consort was produced in 1997 (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77355 2).

Leone Ebreo (Leon the Hebrew) was in fact a pseudonym adopted by the Portuguese Jewish humanist Judah Abarbanal; Garcilaso correspondingly drew attention to his own distinctive ethnic status on the title page of his translation of Abarbanal’s work by naming himself Inga (Inca).

The first book to be published by an American in Europe was actually the Arte de la lingua latina (Art of the Latin language, Barcelona 1568) by Pedro Juan Antonio, an indigenous Mexican who had gone to Spain in 1562 to study law at Salamanca.

A Companion to the Classical Tradition Edited by Craig W. Kallendorf Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd