8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 16

ltem xmlnsm=httpwwww3org1998MathMathML xmlnsmml=httpw

xmlnsxlink=httpwwww3org1999xlinkgtGeographies of Philological

Knowledge Postcoloniality and the Transatlantic National Epic

by Nadia R Altschul (review)

Juan Poblete

Early American Literature Volume 48 Number 3 2013 pp 783-787

(Article)

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

DOI 101353eal20130041

For additional information about this article

Access provided by University of California Santa Cruz (3 Feb 2014 1501 GMT)

httpmusejhuedujournalsealsummaryv048483pobletehtml

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 26

Book Reviews 783

cago Worldrsquos Fair ostensibly a quadricentennial commemoration of the

Columbus voyages

Kolodny closes her study with an investigation of Indian perspectives on

the Viking colony While the shadowy presence of Norse colonists in east-ern Algonquian contact stories remains elusive she fruitfully establishes

striking juxtapositions between native Icelandic and Anglo-American

narratives She brings to light the figure of Joseph Nicolar a Penobscot

scholar who complied the folklore of his people in a self-published book

titled Te Life and raditions of the Red Man appearing in 1893 the same

year as the Columbian Exposition Te parallels between his scholarship

and Rafnrsquos seem evident especially in his attention to little-known origi-

nal sources he boasts that ldquono historical works of the white manrdquo wereused as sources for his chronicle (311) And in her reading of a wide range

of Wabenaki contact stories Kolodny points out the persistent elements of

prophecy that mirror the themes of Icelandic sagas of Vinland Yet when

visiting present-day Penobscot historians she finds that most have little

interest in the question of early native-Norse contacts seeing as these

indigenous storytellers already feel quite secure in the vast depth of the

American past with or without Vikings

Ultimately the elusive target that concerns Koldony remains the storyof how people become confident in their place in the world far more than

the specific search for Vinland Norsemen Anglo-Americans and natives

alike shared a common quest for a long and satisfying story to answer

never-ending questions about identity origin and destiny

983105983150983140983154983141983159 983116983145983152983149983105983150 Syracuse University

Geographies of Philological Knowledge

Postcoloniality and the ransatlantic National Epic

983150983105983140983145983105 983154 983105983116983156983155983139983144983157983116

Chicago University of Chicago Press 2012

248 pp

Tis excellent volume sets out to chart an interesting multilin-gual and ambitious territory How can we productively reread the national

philological traditions of Europe and more specifically their nineteenth-

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 36

784 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

century national epics from the viewpoint of the postcolonial periphery

in this case the work of Venezuelan polymath Andreacutes Bello (1781ndash1865)

Given its scope Geographies of Philological Knowledge exhibits not always

by design a tension between doing justice to its coverage of those nationaltraditions in a European context and doing the same for the complex

abundant and crucial work of Bello in the Latin American one An addi-

tional complication is the claim to intervene in postcolonial studies In this

study Altschul skillfully engages in original transnational and transfield

work while facing the risks of any study willing to cross these boundaries

Te book is divided into an introduction six chapters and a coda

Te introduction (ldquoCreole Medievalism and Settler Postcolonial Studiesrdquo)

clearly states the studyrsquos focus ldquothis book is concerned with a critique ofthe national philologies and the national epic through the medievalist

work of Andreacutes Bellordquo (7) Tis will require first mapping the nineteenth-

century evolution of the main European (mostly French and German)

national philologies as distinct from the subordinated and belated Span-

ish ones and second understanding the work of Bello as an instance of

criollo nationalism with repercussions for both the scholarly and national-

istic traditions of the colonial motherland and Spanish America Using the

w ork of Walter Mignolo on the coloniality of power and on interactionsbetween local histories and global designs Altschul asserts that Spain in

the nineteenth century was considered by the other European imperial na-

tions to be ldquoan exotic and backward lsquocolonialrsquo spacerdquo incapable of produc-

ing knowledge (10) According to the imperial narrative Altschul identi-

fies Spain could only produce culture not knowledge a culture moreover

heavily influenced by the impact of the Arab presence in the Peninsula

Tis double colonial-Orientalizing effect was the challenge to be overcome

by any Latin American criollo nationalist like Bello who was then forced

to come to terms with the claim of belonging to the West by virtue of a

form of European colonization the rest of the West considered backward

Altschul defines the relevance of Mignolorsquos concepts to her study by

modifying them with the help of postcolonial theory Following Mig-

nolo she defines Occidentalism as ldquothe cultural self- understanding of the

Americas as an extension of Europerdquo resulting in ldquoan intellectual internal-

ization of colonialityrdquo (13) Unlike Mignolorsquos view of postoccidentalism asthe epistemic going beyond the boundaries of the weltanschauung of Occi-

dentalism for Altschul the term as manifested in the nineteenth-century

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46

Book Reviews 785

practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo

or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the

Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis

coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for

Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-

chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-

ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin

American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial

theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists

are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well

known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study

Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary

Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-

century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa

Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-

gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on

El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-

ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining

a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-

tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the

nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-

ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the

Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean

secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic

backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two

among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part

of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and

army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-

sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what

criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-

plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such

a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the

modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56

786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-

ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French

and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and

in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed

In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National

Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological

work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo

within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive

effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in

Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-

ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana

(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of

the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of

chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-

dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-

ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings

by the Venezuelan

Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-

necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining

to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European

sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche

natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand

the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by

other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic

still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the

effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)

genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes

Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-

man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability

to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the

Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-

opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66

Book Reviews 787

heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative

when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello

devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the

Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European

single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-

dentalist resistancesrdquo

Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions

Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-

gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-

century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial

trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-

nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-

cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the

Anglo-speaking world

983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz

Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public

and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150

Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011

247 pp

It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-

breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of

American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea

that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that

would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second

book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and

the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-

est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both

authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 36

784 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

century national epics from the viewpoint of the postcolonial periphery

in this case the work of Venezuelan polymath Andreacutes Bello (1781ndash1865)

Given its scope Geographies of Philological Knowledge exhibits not always

by design a tension between doing justice to its coverage of those nationaltraditions in a European context and doing the same for the complex

abundant and crucial work of Bello in the Latin American one An addi-

tional complication is the claim to intervene in postcolonial studies In this

study Altschul skillfully engages in original transnational and transfield

work while facing the risks of any study willing to cross these boundaries

Te book is divided into an introduction six chapters and a coda

Te introduction (ldquoCreole Medievalism and Settler Postcolonial Studiesrdquo)

clearly states the studyrsquos focus ldquothis book is concerned with a critique ofthe national philologies and the national epic through the medievalist

work of Andreacutes Bellordquo (7) Tis will require first mapping the nineteenth-

century evolution of the main European (mostly French and German)

national philologies as distinct from the subordinated and belated Span-

ish ones and second understanding the work of Bello as an instance of

criollo nationalism with repercussions for both the scholarly and national-

istic traditions of the colonial motherland and Spanish America Using the

w ork of Walter Mignolo on the coloniality of power and on interactionsbetween local histories and global designs Altschul asserts that Spain in

the nineteenth century was considered by the other European imperial na-

tions to be ldquoan exotic and backward lsquocolonialrsquo spacerdquo incapable of produc-

ing knowledge (10) According to the imperial narrative Altschul identi-

fies Spain could only produce culture not knowledge a culture moreover

heavily influenced by the impact of the Arab presence in the Peninsula

Tis double colonial-Orientalizing effect was the challenge to be overcome

by any Latin American criollo nationalist like Bello who was then forced

to come to terms with the claim of belonging to the West by virtue of a

form of European colonization the rest of the West considered backward

Altschul defines the relevance of Mignolorsquos concepts to her study by

modifying them with the help of postcolonial theory Following Mig-

nolo she defines Occidentalism as ldquothe cultural self- understanding of the

Americas as an extension of Europerdquo resulting in ldquoan intellectual internal-

ization of colonialityrdquo (13) Unlike Mignolorsquos view of postoccidentalism asthe epistemic going beyond the boundaries of the weltanschauung of Occi-

dentalism for Altschul the term as manifested in the nineteenth-century

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46

Book Reviews 785

practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo

or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the

Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis

coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for

Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-

chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-

ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin

American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial

theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists

are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well

known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study

Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary

Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-

century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa

Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-

gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on

El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-

ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining

a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-

tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the

nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-

ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the

Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean

secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic

backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two

among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part

of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and

army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-

sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what

criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-

plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such

a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the

modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56

786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-

ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French

and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and

in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed

In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National

Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological

work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo

within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive

effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in

Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-

ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana

(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of

the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of

chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-

dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-

ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings

by the Venezuelan

Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-

necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining

to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European

sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche

natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand

the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by

other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic

still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the

effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)

genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes

Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-

man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability

to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the

Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-

opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66

Book Reviews 787

heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative

when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello

devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the

Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European

single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-

dentalist resistancesrdquo

Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions

Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-

gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-

century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial

trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-

nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-

cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the

Anglo-speaking world

983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz

Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public

and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150

Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011

247 pp

It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-

breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of

American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea

that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that

would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second

book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and

the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-

est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both

authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 46

Book Reviews 785

practice of criollos like Andreacutes Bello refers to ldquoOccidentalist resistancesrdquo

or ldquoa form of struggle with coloniality that is carried out from within the

Occidentalist frame of mindrdquo and involves ldquoresistance to the metropolis

coupled with the internal colonialism of subjugated populations [Amer-indians and Afro-Americans]rdquo (13) Tis latter understanding comes for

Altschul from postcolonial theoryrsquos idea of the white settler as if the psy-

chic and cultural contradictions between internal and external colonial-

ism were not a crucial part of Mignolorsquos view or an integral aspect of Latin

American discussions on the concept of criollos ldquoSettler postcolonial

theory thus describes their position with the axiom that settler-colonists

are both colonized and colonizingrdquo (14) Armed with this otherwise well

known premise about Latin American criollos Altschul proceeds to de- velop the six chapters of her study

Te first chapter ldquoTe Global Standards of Intellectual and Disciplinary

Historiographyrdquo follows the trajectories of two famous German twentieth-

century husband-and-wife Hispanists (Yakov Malkiel and Maria Rosa

Lida) on the one hand and of nineteenth-century Spanish philolo-

gist Luis Galvaacuten on the other in a discussion of Bellorsquos scholarship on

El Cid Chapter 2 ldquoaken for Indians lsquoNativersquo Philology and Creole Cul-

ture Warsrdquo ambitiously sets out to bring neocolonialism as a category tobear upon Latin American studies and postcolonial studies by examining

a much later Chilean polemics It revolves around the alleged Germaniza-

tion of the country and some criollo reactions to it toward the end of the

nineteenth century At the time the two famous German philologists re-

ferred to above were brought in by the Chilean government to found the

Pedagogical Institute (from then on in charge of the education of Chilean

secondary teachers) and their arrival unleashed a significant nationalistic

backlash Although Altschul does not go into this they were in fact two

among many other German professionals enticed to come to Chile as part

of a much more encompassing effort at modernizing the Chilean state and

army In this chapter however Altschul does confirm through the analy-

sis of this philological dispute at the end of the nineteenth century what

criollos have known since Independence modernity is much more com-

plex than simply freeing oneself from the imperial metropolis when such

a metropolis has been effectively defined as retrograde and premodern bynew imperial European powers claiming to have the key to what is the

modern Chapter 3 ldquoNational Epic Denied European Assertions of the

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56

786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-

ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French

and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and

in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed

In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National

Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological

work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo

within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive

effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in

Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-

ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana

(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of

the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of

chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-

dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-

ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings

by the Venezuelan

Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-

necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining

to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European

sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche

natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand

the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by

other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic

still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the

effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)

genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes

Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-

man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability

to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the

Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-

opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66

Book Reviews 787

heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative

when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello

devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the

Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European

single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-

dentalist resistancesrdquo

Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions

Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-

gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-

century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial

trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-

nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-

cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the

Anglo-speaking world

983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz

Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public

and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150

Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011

247 pp

It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-

breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of

American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea

that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that

would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second

book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and

the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-

est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both

authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 56

786 983141983105983154983116983129 983105983149983141983154983145983139983105983150 983116983145983156983141983154983105983156983157983154983141 983126983119983116983157983149983141 48 983150983157983149983106983141983154 3

lack of a Spanish Epicrdquo provides an instantiation of such imperial postur-

ing in the work of Ferdinand Wolf and other nineteenth-century French

and German philologists who deny Spain the right to a national epic (and

in the process deny the epic nature of the Poem of the Cid ) and to the formsof popular nationality thus entailed

In chapter 4 ldquoAndreacutes Bello and the Foundations of Spanish National

Philologyrdquo the book arrives at its ostensible core Bellorsquos philological

work and the ways in which it first negotiated his own place as a criollo

within European philological contexts and second had a deconstructive

effect on the possibility of any Spanish national philology Bellorsquos work in

Alstchulrsquos assessment is an accommodation effort geared toward present-

ing his own ideas about the Poem of the Cid (an imitation of French origi-nals in his view) and even more importantly his thesis on La Araucana

(1569ndash89)mdashAlonso de Ercillarsquos poem ldquorecounting the Spanish conquest of

the Mapucherdquomdashas an epic Chilean text Te latter hypothesismdashthe core of

chapter 5 ldquoDefining the Spanish American National Epic and Other Occi-

dentalist Resistancesrdquomdashis for Altschul an example of Bellorsquos ldquoOccidental-

ist resistancesrdquo also manifested in other philological and poetic writings

by the Venezuelan

Chapter 6 ldquoTe Spanish Orient in Bellorsquos Spanish American Occiden-talismrdquo seeks to explain this concept of ldquoOccidentalist resistancerdquo by con-

necting Bellorsquos erasure of Spainrsquos Muslim cultural influence (as pertaining

to Spanish medieval assonance which he saw as firmly rooted in European

sources) with his view of the inexorable disappearance of the Mapuche

natives from Chilean culture At stake in both cases was on the one hand

the challenge Bello faced of overcoming the dual colonization of Spain by

other European powers in the European nineteenth century (an exotic

still medieval country and a Muslim-inflected one) and on the other the

effort to produce a cleanly Occidental (meaning European-American)

genealogy for the Chilean people as seen by criollo eyes

Te main argument throughout this fine book is that nationalist Ger-

man nineteenth-century philology became globally influential in its ability

to create standards that managed to relegate Spanish philology and the

Spanish national epic to the secondary level of imitation and underdevel-

opment In this German- (and French-) influenced space the Poem of theCid produced by a people allegedly incapable of reaching the spiritual

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66

Book Reviews 787

heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative

when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello

devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the

Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European

single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-

dentalist resistancesrdquo

Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions

Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-

gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-

century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial

trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-

nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-

cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the

Anglo-speaking world

983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz

Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public

and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150

Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011

247 pp

It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-

breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of

American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea

that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that

would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second

book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and

the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-

est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both

authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-

8122019 Review Altschul Geographies

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullreview-altschul-geographies 66

Book Reviews 787

heights of their European neighbors was deemed deficient and derivative

when compared to the German and French national epics Andreacutes Bello

devoted considerable time and energy to the writing of his study of the

Poem of the Cid and then to the one on ErcillarsquosLa Araucana Both of thesestudies involved challenges to Spanish national philology and European

single-nationality-based national epics Both of them can be read as ldquoOcci-

dentalist resistancesrdquo

Altschulrsquos valuable book makes at least two important contributions

Foremost to studies of Andreacutes Bello and Latin American national philolo-

gies she brings a detailed reconstruction of the heady mix of nineteenth-

century European philological nationalism and reconstructed imperial

trajectories that function as both some of the intellectual sources of Bellorsquosmedievalist work and the conditions of its possibility Finally to postcolo-

nial studies she brings a welcome interest in an expansion of the geopoliti-

cal and geoepistemological limits that have kept the field focused on the

Anglo-speaking world

983114983157983105983150 983152983119983106983116983141983156983141 University of California-Santa Cruz

Separated by Teir Sex Women in Public

and Private in the Colonial Atlantic World

983149983105983154983129 983106983141983156983144 983150983119983154983156983119983150

Ithaca Cornell University Press 2011

247 pp

It is safe to say that when Mary Beth Norton published her path-

breaking 1980 book Libertyrsquos Daughters Te Revolutionary Experience of

American Women 1750ndash1800 (Cornell University Press) she had no idea

that she had written the first (and chronologically last) part of a trilogy that

would examine gender constructs throughout early America Te second

book in that trilogy Founding Mothers and Fathers Gendered Power and

the Forming of American Society (Vintage 1996) reached back to the earli-

est days of colonization bringing to life a Filmerian world that was both

authoritarian and organic Separated by Teir Sex not only bridges the gapbetween these two monumental studies (it is a prequel to Libertyrsquos Daugh-