Reading Inca History

"At the heart of this book is the controversy over whether Inca history can and should be read as history. In Reading Inca History, Catherine Julien finds that the Incas did indeed create detectable life histories.". "Julien identifies two Inca historical genres that contributed most to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish narratives: official dynastic genealogies and rulers' life histories. She uses a side-by-side comparison of many of the sources to identify the structure of underlying Inca genres and establish the dependency on oral sources. By looking at the multiple versions of particular events, she concludes that the prevailing Spanish versions of them could only be the result of subtle manipulation by a powerful lineage that ruled the largest empire ever known in the prehispanic Americas."--BOOK JACKET.