This thesis explores the uses of classical learning in colonial Rio de la Plata and early independent Paraguay (c.1767-1815). It examines different ways in which classical influences are discernible: in the works of the Jesuit José Manuel Peramás (Chapters 1 and 2), in colonial classrooms and library inventories (Chapter 3), and in the political discourse of Paraguayan independence (Chapter 4). As missionaries, educators and authors of Latin literature, the Jesuits exerted a powerful cultural force in the Rio de la Plata until their expulsion in 1767, yet their legacy in the intellectual life of colonial Paraguay has been neglected; Paraguayan historians dismiss the colonial period as a time of cultural stagnation, only revived by the importation of Enlightenment ideas from Europe and North America in the late eighteenth century. Yet these same scholars have not satisfactorily explained the ideology of the independence, given that the political rhetoric of the new republics was not always consistent with Enlightenment ideals. My thesis takes a revisionist point of view, arguing that the uses of classical knowledge reflected broader intellectual trends in the transition from the colonial to independent periods which help explain the initial construction of national identities in the Rio de la Plata.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:720492 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Arbo, Desiree |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/91085/ |
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