| This work examines a corpus which consists of three critical approaches to Christopher Columbus' writing (the Diario de navegacion and the "Carta de Jamaica").;This analysis is centered on the premise that every reading is subject to the ideological constraints (the reader's and the author's) that are both at the centre of every reading and are reproduced in scholarly analysis of the text. Thus, using the methodology and the theoretical parameters of discourse analysis, this thesis, instead of adding to the already numerous critiques of Columbus' writing, sets about interrogating existing critiques from within their theoretical constructs.;Chapter One, deals with the perspective supplied by an investigation based in Semiotics and looks at several chapters of The Conquest of America, by Tzvetan Todorov. In Chapter Two, we will see how Beatriz Pastor employs a Marxist analysis of the Diario in "Cristobal Colon y la definicion del botin americano," a chapter of her prize winning book Discurso narrativo de la conquista de America. Finally, Chapter Three looks at how Sara Castro Klaren uses the analytical tools provided by Feminism in an article titled "What does Cannibalism Speak? Jean de Lery and the Tupinamba Lesson". (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
