"Both parts of La Malinche speak to the main goal of my research paper, to analyze the historical exile of Malintzin: Long is at once an interpreter of history and a literary writer and therefore supplies an important view of Malintzin in two seemingly separate scholarly spheres. Long’s opinions on Malintzin certainly must be viewed as historical evidence and not as a secondary source: They illustrate a view of Malintzin not during her own time, but in a time when she was being remembered by history for very specific reasons."
(A quote from the paper I handed in.)
I'm currently having a lot of issues with Long, and I think that is because I can't seem to separate the feeling of weirdness about the book from my analysis of it. I found it during one of those preliminary searches in the Bard Library catalog. "Malinche" being in the title brought me to a hidden section somewhere on the second or third floor of the library where I pulled out a very tiny, old book. I was pulling a lot of books off the shelf, so I payed little mind to it as I continued my search. I figured it might be a short analysis of Malintzin in history, considering how little I knew about her. When I finally got to sit down with the book - in Jane's presence, actually - I realizes that it was a short novel. It astounded me. I didn't really know what to do with it. What was this novel doing in the library and why had it been written? I started to explore Malintzin's role in fields outside of history, and realized how much more prominent she is in literature and art. This somewhat led me to my current endeavor to explore her place in literature and myth. But that's kind of a different story for my secondary source paper.
The main thing I got from Long's book is his apparent inability to seperate Malintzin from Cortes. I'm very interested in the connection he makes between women and men and what that means to the myth of Malinche.
I want MORE about the ideas in that provocative last paragraph! As Elvis said, don't be cruel ;-) Your observation about Long’s inability to represent Malinche as an entity distinct from Cortes is terrific. Perhaps you could explore these ideas in your next post? What’s so weird about the way Long imagines Malinche? I take it you think that what Long does and what he tells the reader he’s setting out to do don’t exactly line up. So what? Do explain!
ReplyDeleteLet me complicate things a little. Do you suppose that savvy readers in 1939 would read and analyze Long’s book the same way you are? In terms of gender politics, might the novel have seemed daring or Victorian or something else? Or might readers have been interested in completely different questions, perhaps aesthetic ones? I think it would be terrifically useful for you to see how the novel was received by contemporary readers, which will tell you quite a lot about its 1939 context (and your own position as a feminist and a historian in 2011). I therefore challenge you to see if you can find contemporary book reviews. Consult Presnell for possible search strategies.
Continued...
ReplyDeleteI also want to applaud Professor Ewing’s requirement that you conduct part of your research by actually setting foot in a physical library. What better evidence for this wisdom of her directive than your discovery of Long’s novel? If you’d restricted yourself to online searches, you might never have discovered it. It’s worth noting that it was the book’s *physical* properties that attracted your attention. It’s slim, has unusual dimensions (4” by 8”?), and is beautifully bound. I’m ashamed to say that until recently I regarded physical academic libraries as things I didn’t really need to bother with.
Which reminds me of the discussion we started about the utility of studying early modern texts in physical archives. Why go to all that the trouble when you can download a copy of the original text from, say, EEBO? For starters, as I mentioned, no digital copy can tell you anything about watermarks, which are rich sources of information (e.g., the place of production and quality of the paper can suggest the possible readership). I may be wrong, but it’s my impression that the paper on which nearly all early modern texts were printed (in English anyway) bore a watermark. There’s a *wonderful* recent book by Mark Bland called *A Guide to Early Printed Books and Manuscripts* that discusses the surprisingly fascinating world of watermarks, among other attributes, and is guaranteed to interest a bibliophilic historian like you.
What are other reasons why you should study the original text in an archive if you can? Speaking of archives, don’t forget to get going on that appointment! Assume it may be a whole month before you’re allowed to see the items you want to see…
Mark Bland here. I'm very glad you find the book helpful. There is nothing like holding the object in hand and thinking about it, not as a text as such, but as 'the thing itself'; the fact that the novel has the shape (format), type and space that it does is not an accident: someone somewhere made a deliberate series of decisions about all those things.
ReplyDelete