Rhetoric in the New World

In Rhetoric in the New World, Abbott shows that when the literate culture of the Old World confronted the oral culture of the New, rhetoricians faced issues unanticipated by their classical predecessors and for which European experiences offered few insights. Abbott's study begins with an examination of the Spanish rhetorical tradition - a tradition that would affect many aspects of the colonial enterprise, including the campaign to Christianize the New World, the European perceptions of indigenous discourse, and the effort to transplant humanistic educational institutions to Spain's two great colonies, Mexico and Peru. Abbott reconstructs rhetoric's role in Spain's American empire, describing the colonies as the site of extraordinary conflicts between cultures, traditions, religions, and languages. According to Abbott, never before had rhetoric been required to confront peoples and places so apparently alien to its ancient Mediterranean origins. . Abbott contends that these conflicts infused colonial rhetoric with an urgency and intricacy often surpassing the academic contentiousness of European humanism. Abbott reveals the uniquely American rhetoric produced by this co-mingling of Old and New World rhetorical traditions through case studies of such major colonial rhetoricians as Bernardino de Sahagun, Diego Valades, Bartolome de las Casas, Jose de Acosta, El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and Jose de Arriaga.