Paradoxographical Descriptions of Caribbean Animals in Fray Ramón Pané’s Relación acerca de las antiguëdades de los Indios

Kyrie Miranda-Farnell

The Citadel

Page 058-075

Abstract: This essay investigates Fray Ramón Pané’s text from 1500 CE, Relación acerca de las antiguëdades de los Indios, within the literary context of the paradoxography. It examines cultural frameworks and general literary knowledge that would have been understood by Pané within the structures of Spanish and Hieronymite societies. This essay compares the framework and content of Pané’s work with the known paradoxographies of Aelian and Aristotle, focusing on the emphasis placed by Pané on transformation via linguistic translation/interpretation and mythological animal representation. Through my analysis of the original text, I outline Pané’s transliteration of Taino mythology and culture, emphasizing the significance of this New World text itself within the paradoxographical genre, a genre that had generally been in disuse long before Europeans arrived in the Caribbean. While I base my analysis in the study of genre, my general focus is the inclusion and importance of transformation and animal lore within Taino culture, and their transliteration into a little-used European genre by a little-known Spanish friar.

Keywords: Ramón Pané, Taino, paradoxography, mythology, hieronymite, colonial, animal, folklore

DOI: 10.53397/hunnu.jflc.202302005

• 下载此 PDF 文件