Transcultural Intertextuality in Colonial Latin America

doi:10.1017/9781108976893.015

Chapter 14 - Transcultural Intertextuality in Colonial Latin America

from Part IV - Literacies

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022

Galen Brokaw

Edited by

Rocío Quispe-Agnoli and

Amber Brian

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Rocío Quispe-Agnoli: Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Amber Brian: Affiliation:
University of Iowa

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Summary

The Latin American colonial period was a time of intense military, economic, social, political, and religious upheaval. Although European colonial expansion eradicated or seriously emaciated many indigenous societies and imposed itself on them politically and culturally, the conquest and colonization of the Americas was also a period of transculturation in which new symbolic forms–racial, religious, political, social, even gastronomic–emerged from the interaction between European and indigenous cultures. In some cases, the results of transculturation are relatively easy to identify, but the interaction between alphabetic writing and indigenous media such as Mesoamerican iconography and the Andean quipu is much more difficult to detect. This chapter proposes a theory of transcultural intertextuality as a model for understanding the nature of this interaction and a basis for the identification and analysis of particular instances.

Keywords

Mesoamerican iconography pictography quipu transculturation intertextuality transcultural intertextuality signifying practice alphabetic writing colonial Latin America

Type: Chapter
Information: Latin American Literature in Transition Pre-1492–1800 , pp. 211 - 227

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108976893.015 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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