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The AS-IF of the Book of Kings: Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo's Colonial Poetics of History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Mark Thurner
Mark Thurner*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Abstract

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Prior to the nineteenth century, the book of kings, or dynastic history, was the dominant mode of historiography in Europe and the Americas. This article explores the as-if or in-theory dimension of colonial dynastic history by way of a reading of Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo's early-eighteenth-century histories of Spain and Peru. Peralta's histories have been read as sycophantic, premodern texts that not only do not live up to the modern standards of historiography but moreover are in bad taste, that is, rhetorically prone to the excesses of Lima's colonial court culture. In contrast, I argue that Peralta's poetics of history reveal the subtle and ingenious rhetorical means by which history came to occupy, via imitating the figure of the prince, a sovereign and prognostic position of critique as the prince's simulacrum, that is, as a copy that has no original other than itself. In the case of Peralta's histories, this position of critique was colonial and postcolonial.

Resumo

Resumo

Hasta el siglo XIX fue el libro de los reyes, o la historia dinástica, el modo dominante de escribir historia oficial y no oficial, tanto en Europa como en las Américas o el Caribe. Este artículo explora la dimensión “como si” o “en teoría” de la historia dinástica colonial por medio de una lectura de dos obras históricas escritas por el criollo limeño Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo en la primera mitad del siglo XVIII. A menudo Peralta ha sido leído como sicofanta, premoderno, y de pésimo gusto, es decir, entregado a los excesos barrocos de la cultura cortesana colonial. En contraste, aquí se arguye que la poética de la historia de Peralta nos revela los poderosos medios internos o discursivos que hicieron posible que la historia ocupe, en una operación de imitación o mimesis del príncipe, una posición crítica y soberana como fuente fiel y voz progresiva de la verdad, a servicio de la nación.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , 2009 , pp. 32 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the LARR editors and anonymous reviewers, and the research support granted by the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program of the U.S. Department of Education, and the University of Florida. I also wish to thank Alejandra Osorio for sharing with me her ideas about Lima and Peralta. All translations are mine.

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