Terror en el Orinoco: Formas del espanto animal y vegetal en la historia natural de José Gumilla

<p>“Terror in the Orinoco: Forms of Animal and Plant Horror in the Natural History of José Gumilla”, analyzes the repertoire of terrifying plants and animals that the Spanish Jesuit missionary José Gumilla described in his 1745 compendium <em>El Orinoco Ilustrado y Defendido </em>—a work that, surprisingly, has not been read from the perspective of animal and plant studies. Based on Spanish old models of the natural history of the Indies (Fernández de Oviedo, Acosta), Gumilla reconstructs an archive of monstrous beings (alligators, piranhas, snakes, poisonous plants) that challenges old medieval religious discourses when confronted with the nascent illustrated discourses. My analysis shows that, by doing that, Gumilla’s translation of the natural world into a literary horror archive should be read as an early instantiation of what Noël Carroll calls “art-horror.” The Jesuit priest verbalizes, then, American Natural World by taking the side of the dark forces of the imagination: only there, it could be said, does his verb seem to find shelter. And that shelter, a few decades later, will be reviled and despised by Humboldt, who frontally attacks Gumilla's work and every speculative fiber that inclines Natural History to the realms of the unreal. Humboldt wants to bring back the nature of the Orinoco to the limpid lights of zoology, and botany, dissolving and denying all possibility of horror.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2022

Author dc:creator

• Martinez Bachrich, Roberto E

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Raquel Chang-Rodríguez

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Carlos Riobó
• Juan Carlos Mercado

• Botany
• Latin American Literature
• Spanish Literature
• Zoology
• Orinoco
• Historia natural
• Horror animal
• Horror vegetal
• Terror-arte
• Ilustración
• Gumilla
• Humboldt
• Fernández de Oviedo

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5114

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-6200