Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Language and history: Renaissance humanism and the philologic tradition
- 3 Language and history in the Comentarios reales
- 4 Philology, translation, and hermeneutics in the Comentarios reales
- 5 Contexts and intertexts: the discourse on the nature of the American indian and the Comentarios reales
- 6 “Nowhere” is somewhere: the Comentarios reales and the Utopian model
- 7 Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Philology, translation, and hermeneutics in the Comentarios reales
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Language and history: Renaissance humanism and the philologic tradition
- 3 Language and history in the Comentarios reales
- 4 Philology, translation, and hermeneutics in the Comentarios reales
- 5 Contexts and intertexts: the discourse on the nature of the American indian and the Comentarios reales
- 6 “Nowhere” is somewhere: the Comentarios reales and the Utopian model
- 7 Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the preceding chapter we saw that Garcilaso defined his task in the Comentarios reales as a reinterpretation of Inca history; and, that his metahistorical remarks revealed a filiation with a philosophy of language which clearly reflects the influence of humanist philology. Historiographic authority derived from a command of the original language allowed Garcilaso to claim an interpretative privilege that was beyond the reach of the vast majority of Spanish historians. We also saw that Inca history is presented as an oral text in the Comentarios reales, inscribed in a narrative composed in Quechua and stored in the collective memories of the Inca elders. Garcilaso's own history, as he repeatedly stated, was a reinterpretation of a preexisting text. His corrective intent was directed at the Spanish histories, but the object of interpretation on whose authority the corrections were made was that original Quechua text to which he had access through his command of the original language, via his great-uncle's oral account and, later, in correspondence with relatives and friends in Peru. I would now like to demonstrate that the conceptualization of history as a metatext, as the commentary of a primary discourse, is actualized in the Comentarios reales as a vast enterprise of translation and exegesis of the language of that original text. In the pages that follow I will examine how philology functions as a formal element in the text; how it shapes the narration of Inca history and its interpretation. I will argue, in short, that Garcilaso's “history” is both conceptually and structurally a philological commentary, exploring the consequences that the formal characteristics of the narrative have on the representation of the Inca past.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988