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256 Short Notices by the accompanying letters (and the insistence on marginalisation also diminishes the various contributions of w o m e n to history). A more nuanced feminism might question whether Cassandra's absorption into the male public sphere is necessarily a validation of her gender. Indeed, Cassandra's letters are so imbued with the language of her peers that little of a personal voice remains. The letters raise the interesting question of whether entry into the humanist tradition produces another voice or submerges it. Moreover, although Cassandra's self-deprecation and use of diminutives (homuncula, virguncula, vocula) are described by Mazzoni as expressions of her perceived inferior position, such selfdeprecation was also a topos of male authors - and, one suspects, a means to elicit further compliments. Perhaps more information about the humanist epistolary conventions would help the novice reader. The artificiality of such mannered epistles, and the hyberbolic, almost sycophantic, admiration expressed therein require a subtlety of reading to discern intent. Nevertheless, this edition provides a valuable source for those involved in cultural or gender studies, or the Early M o d e m period when, as this translation phrases it, there was vast appreciation for the 'enormity of [a person's] learning' (p. 79). Rosemary Dunn School of Humanities James Cook University Griffin, Nigel, ed. and trans., Las Casas on Columbus: Background and the Second and Fourth Voyages (Repertorium Columbianum 70), Turnhout, Brepols, 1999; cloth, pp. xii, 494; R.R.P. EUR74.00; ISBN 2503508839. The perennial interest in Columbus's discoveries and the bringing together o worlds which were previously isolated, with incalculable effects on global history, has led to a combined international effort to produce an up-to-date series of all the original contemporary source materials relating to Columbus's four voyages, and an accurate English translation which takes into account modern techniques ofphilology. Since itsfirstprinting in 1875-6, Bartolome de Las Casas's Historia de las Indias has been a critical source for historians, particularly those who sympathise with his vocal opposition to the violent Spanish treatment of the Indians. Although later Spanish editions have appeared, and the 1994 volumes of Las Casas's complete works are well regarded, this new edition gives a better Short Notices 257 idea ofthe revisions he made to his original text. Only selected extracts in English translation have previously appeared so that the present volume is thefirstto enable non-Spanish speakers to read the whole text, appreciate Las Casas's technique and judge his reliability. Anthony Pagden's brief introduction gives an admirable summary of Las Casas's approach, which must be treated as skilled and sophisticated rhetorical writing even though with false modesty he deplores his roughness of prose, presenting it therefore as evidence that it truthfully sets out what has really happened. He claims to follow the Greek and Roman historians who wrote from their personal experience of what they had seen but, while he was said to travel with massive archives and makes reference to documents he has seen, we have little information about his sources. Pagden makes it clear that as well as being involved in a political confrontation with those who supported and justified the Spanish expropriation of the land and its people, Las Casas was engaged in a literary and linguistic confrontation with Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo and others w h o were attempting to reconstruct the image of the behaviour of the Spanish settlers as the chivalric deeds of heroes. Translation is a delicate art but, although one might occasionally query Dr Griffin's choice of phrase, the English reads clearly and well, enabling a sustained analysis of Las Casas's methods of persuasion. The full text makes it possible to assess his purpose. H e carefully intersperses his appeals to the law of nature, the ius gentium and natural reason as justifying the Indian rulers' right - indeed duty - to resist the Spanish in respect of the common good, freedom and preservation oftheir fatherland with interesting detail about the Indians' way of life, how they caught fish, fermented wine and made pottery. He clearly appreciated the way to hold an audience and win their sympathy. His constant reiteration of a...

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