Chapter 1 - The Foundations of the Empire of Eloquence

Summary

Chapter 1 argues that the foundations of an Iberian “Empire of Eloquence” were laid in the sixteenth century by the simultaneous expansion of humanist intellectual and educational traditions. This chapter takes the form of a case study of the Valley of Mexico placed within the context of an emerging Iberian World. As well as offering a thumbnail sketch of the Iberian World circa 1550, it makes the case for significant continuity or at least parallels across the pre-/post-Conquest divide. The colleges where classical rhetoric was taught were often built on the site of earlier indigenous institutions, while Renaissance rhetoric and oratory replaced similar indigenous forms of social ordering, most notably Nahuatl huehuetlatolli (“ceremonial speeches”).