Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas

by Roland Greene

Overview

Love poetry dominated European literature during the Renaissance. Its attitudes, conventions, and values appeared not only in courtly settings but also in the transatlantic world, where cultures were being built, power exercised, and policies made. In this major contribution to our understanding of both the Age of Exploration and early modern lyric, Roland Greene argues that love poetry was not simply a reflection of the times but a means of cultural transformation.

European encounters with the Americas awakened many forms of desire, which pervaded the writings of explorers like Columbus and his contemporaries. These experiences in turn shaped colonial society in Brazil, Peru, and elsewhere. The New World, while it could be explored, conquered, and exploited, could never really be "known"—leaving Europe's desire continually unrequited and the project of empire unfulfilled.

Using numerous poetic examples and extensive historical documentation, Unrequited Conquests rewrites the relations between the Renaissance and colonial Latin America and between poetry and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226306704
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	02/15/2000
Series:	Center for American Places - Center Books on American Places Ser.
Edition description:	1
Pages:	297
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Roland Greene is the Mark Pigott KBE Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. His most recent book, Unrequited Conquests: Love and Empire in the Colonial Americas, is also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Editions and Translations
Introduction: The Unrequitedness of Conquest
1. The Columbian First Person
2. "For Love of Pau-Brasil": Objectification in Colonial Brazil
3. Love Poetry in the World
4. The Imperial Sidney
5. Huaca, Love, and Conquest: The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
Epilogue
Notes
Index