Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World

Upon reading the title of Stephen Greenblatt's slim book (it consists of just over two hundred pages, of which nearly a quarter is endnotes) one might be tempted to wonder if Greenblatt has taken up a latent interest in Marxist Studies and strayed from New Historicism, an area for which he arguably has become a figurehead (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN: 0-226-30625-6). Of course, there is a neat subtitle which rectifies any confusion: The Wonder of the New World. The time period of this project seems right, seeing as the explorations of the Americas occurred roughly at the same time of the beginning and flourish of the Renaissance, which is on par with the preferred time period in which the works in Greenblatt's extensive catalogue tend to discuss; yet, the subject matter seems strikingly different. In the index, there are merely thirteen given page numbers in which Shakespeare or his plays have been mentioned and incorporated into this discussion. This seems scarce, coming from a writer whose other works include Shakespearean Negotiations, Hamlet in Purgatory, and Will in the World, as well as editing The Norton Shakespeare. So what then is the Bard's most prominent aficionado and scholar alive today doing in this book? Greenblatt takes his interest in early Modern English legal documents, court briefings, diaries and logs, and other "miscellaneous" literary sources, and casts an observing eye away from Europe proper, the genesis of the travelers whose explorations make up the content of this book; following the explorers, he focuses on what they focused: the new, frightening and inviting (all at once) world. He abandons his normal region of investigation and instead, chooses to follow Cortés, Columbus and company across the Atlantic, to a world not populated by Shakespearean actors but of conquistadors performing their own unscripted, divinely and royally advocated speeches, cultural rituals and historical histrionics. The title is slightly misleading; with its promise of an extended discussion of the many "discovered" and usurped commodities and land originally belonging to Native Americans, or Indians, as Greenblatt unapologetically refers to them, ignoring the then-nascent push to diligently apply politically correct monikers to all things tinged with the remnants of "white guilt." The Europeans called them Indians, believed they were Indians; so why, he argues, would we call them anything else in a book that tries to peer from the eyes of those who claimed the New World for their respective crowns? The rejection of this practice, the speech act of renaming, fits in well with one of the book's major topics: the practice of European discoverers and conquerors christening their new possession in their native tongue. But instead of focusing primarily on the mere material objects found in the brave new world of cannibals, headless men with eyes resting squarely in their chests, and gold-plated roads, Greenblatt chooses

A highly interesting and well written account of how the early European explorers claimed the New World as their own. The author's account of ownership was not limited to just the land, and all of its wealth, the natives themselves were considered subjects of the King of Spain-and of the Christian God. Unfortunately the author is a bit of a "third world-er" describing the Europeans as liars and not allowing himself to speak for or about native cultures. This line of reasoning has only one end and that is the old ideal of the Noble Savage. The author just cannot bring himself to say that European explorers were not practicing anything new under the sun. Some readings of the ancient Akkadians or the Babylonians should remind us that aggressive and superior cultures have always overpowered smaller and weaker societies.

This is an excellent critical analysis, written by the highly educated, greatly informative Stephen Greenblatt. In this analysis of the motivation behind conquest, in its various shapes and forms in what is now North America, as well as other parts of the world, new light is shed on the driving forces that pushed Middle Age explorers to seek out new, more exoticized territories. The statement is reiterated, time and again, throughout the course of this book that European explorers/colonists were motivated by the vision of the "marvelous" that existed in the indigenous, uncolonized parts of the world. The only way to truly realize the potential of these people and their rich natural resources, was to possess them in some form. Greenblatt sheds new insight on what was going on in the head of Columbus (one of the many examples presented here), when he set out to conquer what he understood to be India, hence his reasoning behind calling the indigenous people he discovered "Indians." This will definitely make you reconsider what Columbus Day really stands for, as well as ponder how the scope of human relations has been altered, based on the motivation of possession and ownership alone. Fascinating and cautionary......

Stephen Greenblatt, literary critic, research scholar, and professor at Berkeley shines the spotlight on various historical documents, and speculates that what accounted for the appropriation and colonization of the New World was the fact that Europeans had print literacy. The ethos projected by Greenblatt is a likeable one--a scholar who likes blues bars in Chicago and who was captivated by stories as a child. He weaves his own literacy narrative into his analysis of historical writings produced by the likes of Columbus, Jean de Lery, and others who were at the forefront of colonization. Ultimately, Greenblatt makes the point that the ways in which "wonder" and the "marvelous" circulated in European discourse become the strategies for colonizing practice. To tell his version of the ways in which peoples were conquered, Greenblatt uses the writing that tells of events, focusing especially on anecdote, feeling as he does that anecdote, though sometimes not valued in our fact-laden world, does the lion's share of the work, functions somewhere between what occurred and the formalized history that gets told. The book is a strong argument that "wonder" and more especially, written "wonder" functioned to elevate certain peoples and demonize others. It makes the equally strong point that writing, though in some cases works to the detriment of peoples and cultures, can also be the liberating force as well.Texts that would work well in conversation with Greenblatt's would be Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. Also useful would be Walker Percy's essay, "The Loss of the Creature," and Clifford Geertz's essay on Balinese cock-fighting.