Taming wonder through ekphrasis (Florida and Europe, 1542 and 1605)

Abstract

Constructing the so-called New World as an object of knowledge –and conquest- was a hard task for early modern Europeans. First, it was difficult to understand, and at the end to convince others of the veracity of the information collected about new and strange lands, often described as nothing short of “marvellous”. Second, during the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries, knowledge about the world was supposed to be bound –to a great extent- to the works of ancient and biblical authorities. Third, even if the accounts of America’s first-hand witnesses were to be believed by their European audiences, their discrepancies about the characterization of the New World led to suspicion or even distrust. In this situation, truth and trust building were a polemic issue, and questions about what to believe were thus, arisen: How did the conquest’s events really develop? What to do with the information about wonderful, out-of-the-ordinary episodes? Who was lying, who was telling the truth?In order to build trust-worthy accounts about a wonder-filled new part of the world, its witnesses took advantage of every available strategy. The description of the New World took place in a culture of truth that mingled different elements to create verisimilitude: bookish erudition, rhetoric devices, direct observation, validation of empirical data and social standing. One of these elements was the old ekphrasis, a classical rhetorical device used to create life-like descriptions of natural and cultural phenomena. Its evocative powers could portray –and control- wonder, translating visual perceptions into a coherent, explanatory narrative.Here, I will consider the link between wonder and verisimilitude through the use of ekphrasis in two founding narratives of Spanish Florida: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La relación... (1542) and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s La Florida del Inca (1605). Both authors employed different strategies to support their texts: Álvar Núñez wrote a first-hand account to justify how he ended stranded in Florida; Garcilaso wanted to be recognized as a competent historiographer, able to articulate and elevate diverse testimonies in an overarching narrative. But besides this, the attention given to Floridians’ war practices –the topic I will analyse here- was also a crucial element in Cabeza de Vaca and el Inca’s different claims. The former had to transform a failure into a service to the King, while the latter was invested in establishing the dignity and rationality of American natives. The detailed description of their war exploits aimed to elicit admiration and surprise from its European readers, but also to help them understand those feats, overcoming the idea of the American natives´ supposed weakness. Ekphrastic devices sustained the case of Floridians as being worthy enemies, both picturing their actions as directly-seen, and mimicking the surprise –translated as wonder- of the European readers as they imagined them.The combination of eye-witness testimony and rhetoric devices present in Álvar Núñez and Garcilaso’s narratives underlines the rich variety of strategies used to produce plausible knowledge about wondrous new lands in the early modern period. In a broader sense, it shows how stylistic concerns played an important role in evidence production: the ekphrastic eye was part of the scientific eye’s history development through the witnesses of the wide, non-European world.