To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain by Esther Fernández (review)

Abstract

engaging. Quispe-Agnoli focuses on “writing as an Indian” (106) complements Dulfano’s problematization of debates around indigeneity. The next two essays by Chang-Rodríguez and Guengerich, on the other hand, focus on elite women’s roles and treatment in the Commentaries. “The Royal Commentaries, Language, and Visual Representation” consists of five essays on three separate topics (linguistics, visual media, and imagination). Zamora’s focus on Garcilaso’s use of language in service of his larger political project nicely complements Mazzotti’s description of Garcilaso’s ethnographic and narrative writing styles. The two would work well in a course unit on sociolinguistics. Diving into Andean cosmologies (Castro-Klarén) and visual representations (Montenegro) gives a more nuanced picture of the conquest of the Inca. Finally, Beckjord analyzes the role of the imagination in the Commentaries, including imagined scenes and details, and Garcilaso’s authority as a Quechua speaker to correct other authors’ errors. The final group of essays is “Inca Garcilaso Across the Disciplines” (though all five contributors are literature scholars). It includes approaches to put Garcilaso into the context of an international race to find mythical gold in the southeastern United States (Borchard), and to use excerpts from Garcilaso to flesh out students’ understanding of capacocha, or Incan mountain sacrifices (Thomas). Other essays delve into Incan religion (Fuerst) and a “pedagogy of memory” (Cortés-Vélez 247, 251). In the book’s last essay, Serrano describes in detail how to use a story from the Commentaries in a first class to engage students and lay pedagogical foundations. Descriptions of assignments such as blog posts, story maps and written responses follow, and Serrano even includes suggested readings and films. In some ways, this final chapter best illustrates the book’s pedagogical objectives. Some essays are inevitably stronger contributions than others, but many provide specific examples of assignments, paired readings, and discussion topics that could be quite useful to instructors in various fields. These are the pedagogical seeds that will keep readers coming back to this book again and again. For those instructors whose courses focus entirely or in part on the Andean early modern period, this book could be a good addition to their bookshelves.