Marvelous Possessions:

...in which the sentence he speaks of his childhood interest actions of their victims almost irrelevant god's flesh and blood were symbolically in The Arabian Nights and Richard Hallito the outcome...

...it leaves Indian behavior eaten...

...And, as often during the Early every detail of Swift's/Gulliver's account and includes Herodotus, Mandeville-a Modem period, imagination is striking- can be found in the works Greenblatt ex- very great liar but a "knight of non-posly cruel...

...The reader, however, is privy to the New York Times editorial board, is editorial gospel's content, as sections of it are inpage editor of the Chicago Tribune...

...By the literary criticism of were directed not at native Americans, the their own account, gold had an obsessive the "New Historicists," its language can victims of European exploitation, but at hold on their imaginations: "Montezuma be formidably theoretical...

...tion" from the "Indians," Columbus was trying to meet a formal European legal THE VALUE OF THE OTHER requirement...

...thias, the disciple chosen to from the University of Chicago, and Dr...

...DON WYCLIFF, formerly a member of the St...

...fear...

...John A. McGrath, SM Religious Studies Dept...

...The property of Hebrew Patrick O'Hanrahan, ex-Jesuit and professor of English at Hofstra University...

...power, in spite of the increasing undercountry a new name, they take formal pos- Against such religious conviction, standing, defense, and support they resession of it for the king, they set up a rot- Greenblatt praises a skeptical and toler- ceive...

...University of Dayton 300 College Park Dayton, OH 45469 The University of Dayton (513)229-4321 Commonweal 8 October 1993: 25 for which the only cure was gold...

...In his first and representations, curiously makes the love...

...session"-and Montaigne...

...a sudden surprise of the soul"' at interested judgments like Vitoria's-a what is "at once unbelievable and true...

...Greenblatt image that shows native Americans sat- Greenblatt's terms-like Swift's fiction might have added Diderot...

...with desire, ignorance, and an unwarlike and timid crowd...

...arvelous Possessions of art to analysis of "the imagination at Europeans learned to extort what they is a good book, and I (the] work" of exploitation and plunder...

...The natives found a legal champion in Francisco Vitoria (identified only as the author of De indiis), who in the 1530s found the Spanish claim to the Indies insufficient because the land was already occupied, because the Indians MARVELOUS POSSESSIONS the New World...

...The stroyed, their princes tortured to discov- cultural ethnocentrism by imagining the "disease" affected imagination so strong- er their gold...

...Greenblatt reproduces a famous amines...

...Martin's Press, $24.95, 772 pp...

...and ly theoretical language...

...For more information or a conference brochure, contact: Rev...

...they see a harmless people, are en- could provoke "murderous rage" in the still losing life and culture, land and tertained with kindness, they give the donors...

...This "culture" was so confident, burton's Book of Marvels...

...Wonder," he says, is Spaniards sought title "in armed array from The University of Chicago Press, $24.95, "charged...

...His method, by the endlessly proliferated representation Revolution of 1688...

...Swift's story has its developing tradition of European self-inly melted down gold objects of great sources among writers who are less con- spection and self-criticism that is not, in beauty and expressive power into the scious of what they are revealing, and his version, religious...

...There, treats Christianity at work in the New of the European winners who gained the Gulliver describes the founding of a "mod- World as a cultural and capitalist imperi- New World we have inherited, Marvelous em colony": "a crew of pirates," driven alism so convinced that it was right that Possessions reminds us that Amerindoff course, "go on shore to rob and plun- refusal to accept the gift of Christianity ians in both North and South America are der...

...Elizabeth Bartelme serted between the various parts of the KAREN SUE SMITH is editor of CHURCH book, complete with scholarly apparamagazine, published by the National Pastoral tus, so one knows it is an anti-gospel, esLife Center, New York...

...But for The European "discourses" of legali- possessions" without ceasing to invoke the readers unfamiliar with ty and power, commerce and religion, sense of wonder, Greenblatt asserts...

...Greenblatt notes, that "it expected perfect unassuming voice opens out and humanIn thinking about Greenblatt's judg- strangers-the Arawaks of the Carib- izes Greenblatt's sometimes forbiddingments and methods it might help to con- bean...-to abandon their own beliefs...

...This passage is both too "other" as having a value as great as our ly-and so "rationally," from the point of late and too rhetorically weighted for own...

...It begins with the more abstractly exchangeable form of in- where the ironies are unintended...

...Greenblatt's other European nations, in order to es- is said to have asked Cortes why the subject is how European history, law, an- tablish competing claims to the new lands...

...Greenblatt has profited from a longview of greed-that the Spanish regular- Greenblatt to cite...

...University in Jerusalem, the gospel has fessor emeritus of theology at the same 26: 8 October 1993 Commonweal...

...But traveler-writers he identifies as tolerant, gots...

...She is currently re- This curious, overstuffed pecially critical of all the rest of the searching the life of New York Times reporter novel/travelogue/polemic Twelve and dubious about the ResurrecAnne O'Hare McCormick purports to be a search for tion...

...strangers had such a hunger for gold, and thropology, and politics were used to un- For example, when he asserted that he had Cortes is said to have replied that derstand and justify the appropriation of made his first claim without "contradic- Spaniards had a disease about the heart, PACEM IN TERRIS and THE CHALLENGE OF PEACE An Anniversary Reflection and a Look to the Future • Featuring Robert F. Drinan, S.J...

...Ships are sent..., the natives driven out or deGOSPEL been stolen and no one is able either to REVIEWERS Wilton Barnhardt find it or to translate it, should it turn up...

...founding act of international law-are rare MLeonard Deen Such confrontations provoke imagina- in the Early Modern (mostly fifteenth- and tion, and Greenblatt turns literary analy- sixteenth-century) sources Greenblatt sis of "the imagination at play" in works cites...

...His larger subject is the had suffered "fear and ignorance, which The Wonder of the New World kind of travel writing he calls "the dis- vitiate every choice," and because the Stephen Greenblatt course of wonder...

...It continues isfying a prostrate conquistador's insa- in Travels-make the familiar strange, so in a tradition (at least partly Protestant) that tiable thirst by pouring molten gold down that we can see it...

...centered on a ritual...

...wanted from their new and "marvelous recommend it...

...Here commences a new dominion ac- THE BAD NEWS quired with a title by Divine right...

...This engaging, a blank, and implicitly guiltless...

...From Goya-esque European Possessions is made stranger than Euro- "Areopagitica" or argument for freedom representations like this Greenblatt draws pean religion, and especially Cathol- of speech and publication, and Locke and no conclusions about what native icism-"a religious ideology centered on his justification of the largely bloodless Americans actually did...

...El murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon...

...J. Bryan Hehir Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton with workshops from: Sidney Callahan Christine Firer Hinze Wendy Bauers Northup November 5 - 7, 1993 and others...

...All three are all too often distant ten plank or a stone for a memorial, they ant curiosity that tempers the excesses of words on a page...

...ELIZABETH BARTLEME is a former pro- replace Judas...

...Nothing in Marvelous Greenblatt does not mention: Milton's his throat...

...But dis202 pp...

...Greenblatt values confining himself to European "practice" of a tortured and murdered god of imagination as much as theory...

...LEONARD DEEN teaches English at Queens a lost gospel, that of Mat- Enter Lucy Danton, a graduate student College in the City University of New York...

...Greenblatt native losers and unsparing in its judgment into Several Remote Nations...

...Generous to the sider Book 4 of Jonathan Swift's Travels embrace those of Europe...