Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain

1 Toward a Materialist Poetics of Counter-Epic Literature

Toward a Materialist Poetics of Counter-Epic Literature Discourses of empire appear in artistic, political, and theological writings of every genre in circulation in early modern Spain—from Lascasian critiques of forced conversion and genocide to the explications of Roman law by three generations of jurists who sought legal validation of Spain’s right to the territory, labor, and mineral wealth of America, from Ercilla’s poetic denunciation of Spanish military practices in Chile to hagiographic dramatizations of the lives of the conquistadores commissioned by their seventeenth -century progeny. This study focuses upon identifying and analyzing literary texts that represent and mediate discourses of imperialism in early modern Spain. It is not my purpose to argue that emergent and residual discourses posed significant material threats—“subversions”—to the prevailing system’s order and stability. Rather, the goal of the materialist, “epochal” analysis of counter-epic texts offered here is to highlight the contestatory ideas against which hegemonic martial imperialist discourses defined and defended themselves—and thus to analyze the negotiation of imperial ideologies within texts that foreground the tensions produced by ideological confrontation. As Anthony Cascardi correctly observes, “What is ‘ideological’ about the historical role of literature in the Spanish Golden 1 1 Age is that it is not merely shaped by . . . tensions, but articulates a strongly inflected response to them.”1 Many historians, including Anthony Pagden, John Lynch, J. H. Elliott, and Raffaele Puddu, have examined the relationship between unflattering early modern literary representations of European aristocracy and the social tensions that were produced by the shift from the warrior nobility of the feudal era to the courtiers of absolutist regimes. This modification of the nobility’s role was frequently characterized as a loss of masculinity by those who opposed such changes (as well as by those who benefited from them). The critique of courtiers within counter-epic works gives rise to an interesting paradox, for those who do not fight are despised as feminine, while Romans, indigenous peoples, and Numantians are often coded as hypermasculine and thus barbaric. The rise of the merchant class as a significant competitor for economic power, while less pronounced in earlyseventeenth -century Spain than in England or France, nonetheless constituted a related source of social instability and anxiety.2 Over the course of the sixteenth century, Spain experienced the dazzling heights of dominion over both a mineral-rich overseas colony and the Holy Roman Empire. It also endured a series of fin-de-siècle disasters associated with imperialism: the destruction of the Armada, a plunge in the quantity of metals flowing from the New World, and bankruptcy. As a result, the last decade of the century witnessed an intense debate over the relative advantages and liabilities of imperialist practice, a debate that continued well into the 1600s. There followed a period of retreat from imperialism under Philip III and Lerma, who sought to alleviate Spain’s financial problems through truces with the Dutch, French, and English. This period of peace improved Spain’s financial situation, but it also contributed to a sense of decline based upon nostalgia for the previous century’s glory. For this reason (among others), Philip IV and Olivares did not renew the peace treaties when they expired. Instead, they embarked upon a series of relatively unsuccessful military ventures in the 1620s. The consequences of these ventures included not only a worsening of Spain’s much-valued “reputation ” but also the permanent loss of Portugal and the northern Protestant sections of the Netherlands known as the United Provinces—as well as twelve years of independence for Catalonia. Doubts about the validity Discourses of Empire 2 1. See Anthony J. Cascardi, Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 15. 2. Agostino Lombardo, “Fragments and Scraps: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” in The European Tragedy of Troilus, ed. Piero Boitani (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 213. of imperialism during this period extended to a questioning of involvement in European theaters of action and in the Americas, for defending Spain’s trade monopoly with its colonies was a significant factor in many Continental conflicts. In addition to the pragmatic examination of the benefits and costs associated with the Christian imperial mission conducted by political and diplomatic figures as well as philosophers, the ethical dimensions of conquest sparked considerable discussion among theologians. Elliott notes that missionaries such as Antonio de Montesinos and his...