New World Postcolonial

The Political Thought of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega

Fuerst's book on Inca Garcilaso's Royal Commentaries is an important contribution to postcolonial studies. Garcilaso's masterpiece on Inca history and Spanish conquest is given a new twist by examining it from the perspective of political theory. For the first time a monograph is dedicated to study Garcilaso as a political thinker exposing ideas from the European Renaissance as well as Andean thinking.
Christian Fernandez, Louisiana State University

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The first full-length study to treat both parts of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s foundational text Royal Commentaries of the Incas as a seminal work of political thought in the formation of the early Americas and the early-modern period. It is also among a handful of studies to explore the Commentaries as a “mestizo rhetoric,” written to subtly address both native Andean readers and Hispano-Europeans.

about the author

James W. Fuerst

James W. Fuerst is an assistant professor of writing, chair of writing, and co-chair of literary studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School University.

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James W. Fuerst