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Inca Garcilaso de la Vegas La Florida del Inca (1605) is an account of the 1539-44 De Soto invasion of Mississippian chiefdoms inland of the Florida peninsula and the first history of the Americas by an Indigenous American historian to be published on a printing press. This article examines Pierre Richelets Histoire de la Floride (1670), the first translation of La Florida del Inca from Spanish into any other language, and the only French translation of this work. At first glance, Richelet's translation appears to adapt the source text to the conventions of seventeenth-century relations de voyage (travel narratives). However, I argue that Richelet' translation is better understood as an experiment in paraphrase, a form of translation that challenges the balance of power between author and translator. This article attends to Richelets translation practices in the context of seventeenth-century theories of paraphrase, compares the translation and source text, and considers the author's and translators work as lexicographers. I demonstrate that Richelet claimed an identity as a paraphraste and as a lexicographer by enacting violence over a source text by an Indigenous American author. At the same time, this article reveals Garcilasos enduring presence in early French theories of translation, where his work was instrumental in charting the distinction between paraphrase and metaphrase.
Abstract: Inca Garcilaso de la Vegas La Florida del Inca (1605) is an account of the 1539-44 De Soto invasion of Mississippian chiefdoms inland of the Florida peninsula and the first history of the Americas by an Indigenous American historian to be published on a printing press. This article examines Pierre Richelets Histoire de la Floride (1670), the first translation of La Florida del Inca from Spanish into any other language, and the only French translation of this work. At first glance, Richelet's translation appears to adapt the source text to the conventions of seventeenth-century relations de voyage (travel narratives). However, I argue that Richelet' translation is better understood as an experiment in paraphrase, a form of translation that challenges the balance of power between author and translator. This article attends to Richelets translation practices in the context of seventeenth-century theories of paraphrase, compares the translation and source text, and considers the author's and translators work as lexicographers. I demonstrate that Richelet claimed an identity as a paraphraste and as a lexicographer by enacting violence over a source text by an Indigenous American author. At the same time, this article reveals Garcilasos enduring presence in early French theories of translation, where his work was instrumental in charting the distinction between paraphrase and metaphrase.
KEYWORDS: translation studies, early American South, early Spanish-language publications about the United States, early French-language publications about the United States, early modern histories of translation, paraphrase
Inca Garcilaso de la Vega was an Indigenous Andean and mestizo historian born in Cuzco, Peru, in 1539. That same year, Hernando de Soto used wealth he gained by participating in the capture and execution of Garcilaso's maternal relative Atahualpa Inca in 1533 to lead a six-year invasion of Mississippian chiefdoms inland of the Florida peninsula. When Garcilaso was around twenty years old, he emigrated to Spain and joined Christian armies to fight against the Rebellion of the Alpujarras (1568-71). Years later in Madrid, he encountered Gonzalo Silvestre, a member of the De Soto invasion. Silvestre participated in Spanish invasions of Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Florida, and he had likely known Garcilaso as a child in Cuzco. Garcilaso engaged Silvestre in a series of interviews on his memories of the De Soto invasion and used his testimony to compose La Florida del Inca. When this book was published in Lisbon in 1605, it became the first history of the Americas written by an Indigenous American historian to be printed on a printing press (Durand, clásico 58).1
This article examines Pierre Richelet's Histoire de la Floride (1670), the first translation of La Florida del Inca from Spanish into any other language, and the only French translation of this work. The first part demonstrates that Richelet self-consciously identified as a paraphraste and used translation to experiment with the balance of power between author and translator that formed the basis for this approach. Attending to Richelet's translation deepens our understanding of the politics of early modern paraphrase. By studying paraphrase in practice as well as in theory, this article brings nuance and depth to the widely accepted notion that seventeenth-century paraphrase charted a middle ground between word-for-word translation and invention. Instead, I argue, Richelet's approach to paraphrase consisted of a dual movement between the erasure of his Indigenous American author's voice and the extraction of information he deemed relevant to French colonial projects. Comparing the translation and source text reveals that Richelet claimed an identity as a paraphraste by performing dominance over a source text by an Indigenous American author.
The second part of this article discusses the work of Garcilaso and Richelet in the context of their identities as lexicographers and highlights their diverging approaches: While Garcilaso used language and translation to challenge dehumanizing representations of Indigenous people based in linguistic performance, Richelet used language and translation to dehumanize his Indigenous author and the Indigenous actors in the history he translated. I demonstrate the importance of Richelet's translation of Garcilaso to his later Dictionnaire françois (1680), the first-ever monolingual French dictionary. In my analysis, Richelet fashioned himself as an arbiter of linguistic purity and gained a foothold as a lexicographer precisely by marginalizing the contributions of his fellow lexicographer Garcilaso. Finally, I argue that translation is an embodied practice whereby Richelet constructs and reinforces distinctions between himself and Garcilaso to assert a racially and geographically situated identity.
Ultimately, the article reveals that Garcilaso is a significant, if often implicit, presence in early modern French discourse on translation. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French commentary on the distinction between metaphrase and paraphrase, Garcilaso appeared between the lines to help form the basis for distinguishing between the two translation models.
1. On Translating La Florida
For the past two decades, scholars have framed La Florida del Inca as a foundational text for multiple traditions: as a canonical Latin American colonial text, as a central text in transatlantic studies, as a corrective to an early US American literary canon dominated by Anglo-Saxon Puritans, as a key text in a history of writing in or about what would become the United States by authors of Hispanic ancestry, and as a testimony of an Atlantic world with Indigenous Americans at the center (De Mora y Garrido Aranda; Chang-Rodríguez; Castillo and Schweitzer; Stavans and Acosta-Belén; Weaver). But when Garcilaso wrote, he described a place that was more aspiration than reality. For him, "la Florida" stretched indeterminately from Cuba to New France, and from the Atlantic Ocean to New Spain. He constructed a textual representation of a place he never visited based on his hope for a future where colonists no longer would attempt to destroy the Indigenous Southeast but rather would bring their seeds, livestock, and labor to contribute peacefully to already abundant lands and communities. At the same time, he drew from Neoplatonic philosophy to frame De Soto's attempt to conquer Florida not as a violent contest between enemies but rather as a space of possibility for creating "harmonized worlds" where Indigenous Americans and European colonists would work together to create something that surpassed and improved on its constituent parts (Chang-Rodríguez, "Introduction" 24). Informed by these commitments, Garcilaso also constructed an abstraction when he named peoples indigenous to the Southeast "Indios de la Florida" (Indigenous people of Florida). Garcilaso's term conflates numerous, complex, and dynamic communities with a place invented by Spanish colonists and named after a day in the Catholic religious calendar (Pascua Florida).
Garcilaso hoped that La Florida del Inca would encourage Spanish readers to build diplomatic and collaborative relationships with Indigenous Americans. But as Mvskoke poet Jennifer Elise Foerster notes, the heritage of "original peoples of the Southeast has always been one of cross-cultural adaptation and diplomacy," both before and after the collapse of chiefdoms that de Soto's invasion precipitated (359). Foerster states that
the Southeastern region of what is currently the United States is the ancestral homelands of not only the most widely known Southeastern nations-the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Muscogee (Mvskoke or Creek)-but also countless other cultural groups-Natchez, Yuchi, Appalachee, Timucua, Koasati, Caddo, Catawba-that emerged from the Moundbuilding Centers of the Lower Mississippian Basin and its river's vast networks of tributaries. (359)
In La Florida, Garcilaso based his authority to craftrepresentations and speeches of diverse groups of people indigenous to the southeastern region of what is now the United States on his own identity as an Indigenous American. He asserted that "aunque las regiones y tierras [de las Indias occidentales] estén tan distantes, parece que todas son Indias" (Although the regions and lands [of the West Indies] may be far apart, it seems that they are all Indies; 876).2 Here the word Indias functions as a noun or an adjective, either linking together the regions and lands of the Americas under the Spanish geographical reference or linking them together by defining them all as Indigenous land (tierras . . . Indias). In my analysis, Garcilaso used this ambiguous construction to speak to multiple audiences across multiple timelines. Garcilaso's view of the place and people he writes about is speculative, and his exclusive reliance on Spanish-language sources to construct his account make his claims to represent Indigenous people and places in the Southeast highly unreliable.3 At the same time, his efforts to elicit information on the words and actions of Indigenous Americans from his informant Silvestre and to imagine those words and actions based on his own lived experiences make La Florida del Inca stand out from other Spanish-language colonial histories.
Garcilaso's text had far-reaching impacts that he likely never could have imagined. Attending to the early reception history of La Florida del Inca demonstrates Garcilasos substantial impact on the French language and on early cultures of translation, and it also helps historicize Garcilasos present-day reception history. Scholars and teachers of La Florida del Inca in Spanish and in translation are agents of cultural translation, decontextualizing and recontextualizing this text for new audiences (Burke 10). To fully consider the stakes of this process, we must understand translation as a site of significant cultural work.
2. FROM RELATION DE VOYAGE TO PARAPHRASE
The title of Garcilasos history is La Florida del Inca: Historia del adelantado Hernando de Soto, Gobernador y Capitán General del Reino de La Florida, y de otros heróicos caballeros Españoles e Indios (The Florida of the Inca: History of the Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Governor and General Capitan of the Realm of Florida, and of Other Heroic Spanish and Indigenous Gentlemen). His title announces a central theme in his work-the idea that "behavior and deeds, not genealogy and titles, are the true marks of nobility" -by focusing not just on De Soto but on a larger group of participants and by naming both Spanish and Indigenous people as heroic gentlemen (Chang-Rodríguez, "Traversing" 135). At the same time, Garcilaso puts himself first in the title, and he names himself "el Inca" to reference his maternal lineage and foreground his Indigenous identity (Fernández Palacios 92). Ultimately, Garcilaso's title "highlights the subjectivity of his knowledge"; the Spanish-language source text is Inca Garcilasoss version of Florida (Rabasa 100). But each time this text is translated, it is re-created to reflect someone else's version.
The first edition of Pierre Richelet's translation is titled Histoire de la Floride, ou Relation de ce qui sest passé au voyage de Ferdinand de Soto, pour la conquéte de ce pays (History of la Floride, or Relation of What Happened on the Voyage of Ferdinand de Soto, for the Conquest of That Country). De Soto is the only actor mentioned here; references to "el Inca" and to other heroic Spanish and Indigenous gentleman disappear. And this title adds the words relation (account or letter), voyage (journey), and conquéte (conquest). Highlighting relations de voyage-narrative descriptions of people and places outside France-in the title may constitute an appeal to French readers, since this genre was more popular than novels for much of the seventeenth century (Melzer, "Relation," 223). Gervais Clousier, the bookseller who printed Richelet's translation, was particularly well-known for publishing relations de voyage (Werdet 179). In fact, he identified his print shop on Histoire de la Floride's frontispiece by its location "au Palais, sur les degrez montant à la Sainte Chappelle, à la seconde Boutique, à l'Enseigne du Voyageur" (at the Palace, on the stairs going toward the Holy Chapel, at the second Shop, at the Sign of the Traveler). Clousier worked under a sign that depicted a traveler, and the works he published between 1660 and 1670 were consistent with this emblem.· For the bookseller Clousier, a translation of La Florida could supply a well-tested audience with a source of entertainment in its description of places and people French readers considered foreign.
Pierre Richelet (1626-98) was the secretary to French Academy member and translator of ancient authors Nicolas d'Ablancourt, language tutor to international students in Paris, and author of the first-ever monolingual French dictionary, the Dictionnaire françois (1680). Richelets biographers discuss only briefly the impact of translation on his intellectual trajectory. Laurent Bray sees his translation of Garcilaso as part of a productive period he entered after publishing a rhyming dictionary with Nicolas Frémont and speculates that Histoire de la Floride was reprinted many times in the eighteenth century because of the Francophone public's fascination with travel narratives (234). Robert Conneson interprets Richelet's decision to start this project as an imitation of translator d'Ablancourt and as the beginning of a new phase in his career (91-92). Both situate Richlet's translation of Garcilaso in relation to his broader intellectual trajectory, but neither one analyzes this text closely.
Both La Florida del Inca and Garcilaso's later works, the first and second parts of the Comentarios reales de los Incas (1609, 1617), circulated widely in French translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholarship on Garcilasos Comentarios reales in French translation has demonstrated that early modern European readers had an enduring fascination with Garcilaso, whom they sometimes regarded as an exotic other offering glimpses into a faraway world of extravagant wealth (Garcés; Macchi; Mora and Aranda; Rose). The French translation of La Florida del Inca (1605) has received little critical attention, however, despite being printed in French seven times between 1670 and 1737, while Jean Baudoin's French translation of the Comentarios reales, titled Le commentaire royal, ou Phistoire des Yncas (1633), was printed just three times during this same span of time.
Scholars interested in translations of Garcilasos work may overlook Richelet's Histoire de la Floride in part because it does not conform to twentiethor twenty-first-century translation standards, which tend to hinge on the basic assumption that translation involves "the rewriting of a sequence of words with another sequence of words" (Kristal 29). Instead, Richelet rewrote only certain sequences of words and significantly condensed or omitted others. As a result, his translation was significantly shorter than his source text. In fact, when measured by word count, some parts of his translation are only one-third the length of the same passages in Spanish. While critic José Durand acknowledges Richelet's Histoire de la Floride as an important work, since it was reprinted many times, provided a French audience with information about Florida and Louisiana, and made up the source material for two German translations and one English translation of La Florida del Inca, he also notes that Richelet's translation was unfaithful to the source text, or "no del todo fiel" ( "Ediciones" Ixxxii). This article moves beyond the notion of a translator's fidelity or infidelity to a source text. Rather, it begins from the assumption that Richelet's identity as a translator, his translation practices, and the text he created can enhance our understanding of translation cultures and of Garcilasos reception history in France.
Richelet may have produced a much shorter translation to appeal to a growing leisure class interested in reading for entertainment or even to attract readers interested in practical information on colonial invasion. Richelet or his publisher may have included the word conquéte in the title expecting some French readers to recognize the toponym la Floride as a descriptor for land claimed by Spain that France actively sought to colonize. When Clousier acquired the rights to publish a translation of La Florida, Louis XIV had increased his support for efforts to populate the Saint Lawrence River valley and the Mississippi River valley and delta with French settlers, a move that would enhance Frances ability to control trade routes and compete with England and Spain. In 1663, the Crown took control of New France away from the Company of New France to make it a royal province (Eccles 6). Soon after that, Jean Talon, the first Intendant of New France, urged Louis XIV's minister Colbert to support French colonization as far south as Florida or Mexico in efforts to expand the fur trade across North America and secure access to the Mississippi River and its estuaries (Eccles 63). In the preface to a 1685 French translation of the Gentleman of Elvas's account of the De Soto invasion, translator Samuel de Broé asserted that histories such as his were "meslé de beaucoup dinstruction, puisque cest sur ces modeles que l'on doit se regler pour des pareilles entreprises" (mixed with much instruction, for it is these models that one must follow for similar enterprises; "Preface").
Just as Garcilaso instructed the Franciscan priest Jerónimo de Oré to use La Florida del Inca to educate missionaries who planned to travel to Florida, the publisher Clousier likewise may have imagined passing the French translation along to readers interested in pursuing commercial or evangelical colonial projects at the frontiers of what they called New France. However, while it is likely that the title framed Richelet's translation in terms that would appeal to aspiring merchants or to a growing group of travel narrative readers, Richelet's text also spoke to multilingual audiences who routinely read French translations and evaluated them against their source texts (Ladborough 96).
With his version of La Florida, Richelet participated in an ongoing debate on the parameters of a translation model known as paraphrase in French and in English, a translation that privileged the translator's own interpretation of the text as source material above the assemblage of words in the text itself. Today, in Anglophone contexts, paraphrase is commonly associated with John Dryden, who in 1680 theorized it as the mean between the two extremes of metaphrase (word-for-word translation) and imitation. Dryden explains paraphrase as "Translation with Latitude, where the Author is kept in view by the Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words as not so strictly followd as his sense" (38). In the latter half of the seventeenth century, French paraphrastes also challenged the authority of their authors by adapting their translations to the criteria set by their audiences rather than by the source text or its author. Richelet identified himself as a paraphraste with a seven-word epigraph at the beginning of his Histoire de la Floride: "Nec verbum verbo curabit reddere / fidus Interpres. / Horat. art. Poétic" André Lefevre translates this injunction as "Do not worry about rendering word for word, faithful interpreter, but translate sense for sense" (15). These lines draw a connection between Richelet and his better-known mentor and protector, Nicolas Perrot d'Ablancourt. Ablancourt spent his life creating translations of texts by ancient authors infamously termed "belles infideles" (beautiful unfaithful ones) because he adapted classical works to the tastes and expectations of his contemporaries. Ablancourt published the same lines from Horace at the end of his Huit oraisons de Ciceron (1638), which laid the groundwork for European debates on translation, authorship, language, and culture for over a century (Hayes 1).
While Richelet used an epigraph in lieu of a translator's preface, his extensive dictionary entry on paraphrase gives a more explicit overview of his approach to translation. Here he contrasted paraphrase with metaphrase. He defined paraphrase as an "interprétation qui est selon le sens & non pas selon les paroles" (interpretation that is according to meaning and not words) and a paraphraste as "celui qui fait une paraphrase, mais métaphraste signifie traducteur, interprete" (he who makes a paraphraste, but metaphraste means translator, interpreter; 2.120, italics in original). For Richelet, paraphrastes literally created something new: They "made" a paraphrase according to their own interpretation of a work.
It is critical to note that Garcilasos work appeared between the lines of this dictionary entry as the standard for distinguishing between the two models. Richelet referenced Jean Baudoin, who translated Garcilasos Comentarios reales (1609) as Le commentaire royal in 1633, noting "le bon Baudoin le métaphraste ont [sic] maintenu tous ces beaux mots" (the good Baudoin the metaphraste has maintained all those fine words; 2.120, italics in the original). In the entry, Richelet cited a satirical poem by Gilles Ménage, who also held up Garcilasos first French translator as an example of a metaphraste (2.120). In my analysis, Richelet used direct references ences to Baudoin to indirectly reference his own more recent translation of Garcilaso and associate himself with the opposing form of translation, paraphrase. Thus, the dictionary entry implies that while the metaphraste Baudoin acknowledged the authority of each word in the source text, the paraphraste Richelet granted himself the authority to create his own interpretation.
Richelet identified himself as a paraphraste and participated in a debate that worked to distinguish paraphrase from metaphrase. For translation scholar Julie Hayes, this debate about translation models was instrumental in opening a "middle way" between an understanding of "translators as abject and dependent and authors as independent and original" (113). For example, Charles Sorel wrote in 1667 that translators should cultivate a balance between an imitation (a new text made after in the likeness an original) and a copy (word-for-word translation): "Pour paruenir à l'excellence des Traductions, il faut garder vn milieu judicieux; C'est de ne se point trop attacher au[x] sens ny aux mots d'vn Autheur, & de ne sen point trop écarter aussi" (To arrive at the excellence of translations, it is necessary to tend to a judicious middle point, which is to not attach too much to the meaning or to the words of the author, and to not remove too much either; 232). Hayes has argued that this "middle point" created space for translators to experiment with historically innovative forms of "translational" subjectivity that challenged the dichotomy between authorship and creation (113).
However, studying paraphrase in practice as well as in theory brings nuance and depth to the widely accepted notion that seventeenth-century paraphrase charted a middle ground between loyalty and license, or between capturing words and communicating meaning. Instead, as I will argue in what follows, Richelet's approach to paraphrase consisted of a dual movement between the erasure of his Indigenous American author's voice and the extraction of information he deemed relevant to French colonial projects.
3. PARAPHRASE IN PRACTICE
The following examples reveal that Richelet made substantial changes to the source text based on his own evaluation or devaluation of the information he translated. For example, in an episode in which Gonzalo Silvestre and Juan López Cacho ride across a dangerous swamp to retrieve provisions from a Spanish encampment, Garcilaso evoked the conventions of chivalric romance by reporting a dialogue between the two soldiers in first person, while Richelet created a superficial gloss in the third person. I juxtapose the two versions of this episode and use line breaks in the translation to visually communicate the effects of Richelets paraphrase:
Gonzalo Silvestre, sin responder palabra alguna, se partió del gobernador y subió en su caballo, y de camino, como iba, encontró con un Juan López Cacho, natural de Sevilla, paje del gobernador, que tenía un buen caballo, y le dijo: "El general manda que vos y yo vayamos con un recaudo suyo a amanecer al real. Por tanto, seguidme luego, que ya yo voy caminando." Juan López respondió diciendo: "Por vida vuestra, que llevéis otro, que yo estoy cansado y no puedo ir allá." Replicó Gonzalo Silvestre: "El gobernador me mandó que escogiese un compañero. Yo elijo vuestra persona. Si quisiéredes venir, venid enhorabuena, y si no, quedaos en ella misma, que porque vamos ambos no se diminuye el peligro, ni porque yo vaya solo se aumenta el trabajo." Diciendo esto, dio de las espuelas al caballo y siguió su camino. Juan López, mal que le pesó, subió en el suyo y fue en pos de él. Salieron de donde quedaba el gobernador a hora que el sol se ponía ambos mozos, que apenas pasaban de los veinte años. (833)
Siluestre monte donc sur vn excellent cheual qu'on luy tenoit prest, & rencontre Lopes- Cacho
auquel il ordonne de la part du General de l'accompagner.
Gonzalo Silvestre, without saying a single word, leftthe governor and got on his horse, and on the road, as he went, he came upon a Juan López Cacho, born in Seville, page of the governor, who had a good horse, and he told him: "The governor orders that you and I go with his message to the camp by dawn. Therefore, follow me now, as I am already going." Juan López responded saying "By your life, take another, because I am tired and I cannot go there." Gonzalo Silvestre replied: "The governor ordered me to choose a companion. I choose you. If you would like to come, come now and very well, and if not, stay where you are, for just because we both go the danger will not be less, and if I go alone the work will not be greater." Saying this, he spurred his horse and continued on his way. Juan López, as much as it weighed on him, got on his horse and went after him. They leftfrom where the governor was staying as the sun went down both young, for they were barely past twenty years old.
Cacho s'en excuse sur ce qu'il se trouuoit fatigué, & le supplie d'en choisir quelqu'autre; mais comme Siluestre le pressoit de plus en plus,
il cede, monte à cheual, & part auec luy à Soleil Couchant. (1.132-33)
Silvestre got on an excellent horse that someone had ready for him, and he found Lopes-Cacho
whom he ordered on behalf of the General to accompany him.
Cacho excused himself because he was tired, and he urged him to choose someone else;
but since Silvestre pressed him more and more,
he ceded, got on his horse, and leftwith him at sunset.
Richelet omitted descriptive details and reported speech to turn this passage into a succinct overview of causes and effects. In fact, when measured by word count, his translation of this passage only uses 34 percent of the number of words used in the source text.
This example is representative of Richelets approach to almost all the passages in La Florida del Inca written in the first person. For example, Richelet completely omitted the dedication and prologue in Garcilasos own authorial voice." Additionally, when translating speeches by Indigenous leaders that Garcilaso attempted to reconstruct in the first-person voice, Richelet synthesized information and reported speeches in third person. In the following example, Garcilaso begins to recount a speech given by three Indigenous soldiers who survived a long battle near Vitachuco. Garcilaso notes that the men speak in a collective voice, "ayudándose uno a otro en sus razones" (helping each other in their explanations), and he presents their speech in the first-person plural (872). However, Richelet narrates these passages in the third person instead. Rather than re-create Garcilasos rhetorical construction, Richelet composes a superficial gloss of it.
El principal intento que nos sacó de las casas de nuestros padres, cuyos hijos primogénitos somos y herederos que habíamos de ser de sus estados y señoríos, no fue derechamente el deseo de tu muerte, ni la destruición de tus capitanes y ejército, aunque no se podía conseguir nuestra intención sin daño tuyo y de todos ellos. Tampoco nos movió el interés que en la guerra se suele dar a los que en ella militan, ni la ganancia de los sacos que en ella suele haber de los pueblos y ejércitos vencidos, ni salimos por servir a nuestros príncipes para que, agradados y obligados con nuestros servicios, adelante no hiciesen mercedes conforme a nuestros méritos. Todo esto faltó en nosotros, que nada de ello habíamos menester. (873)
Ils lui répondirent qu'ils n'estoient sortis de leurs maisons,
ny dans la veuë de ruyner ses troupes,
ny dans l'esperance de faire butin,
ny de gagner l amitié d'aucun Cacique pour en auoir quelques recompenses. (1.196)
The main aim for leaving the houses of our fathers, whose eldest sons we are and whose heirs we will be of their estates and positions, was not directly the desire for your death, nor the destruction of your captains and army, although our intention could not be realized without damage to you and all of them. Neither were we moved by interest that war tends to give to those who serve it, nor winning the spoils that are gained in war from vanquished people and armies, nor did we set out to serve our sovereigns so that, grateful and obliged for our services, they later will make gifts according to our merits. All of this was missing in us, for we had no need of any of it.
They responded that they had not lefttheir homes,
with the goal of destroying their troops,
nor with the goal of getting spoils,
nor of winning the friendship of some Cacique to receive some recompense from it.
José Rabasa has argued that when Garcilaso included his own first-person voice in the narrative of La Florida del Inca to reconstruct the voices of Indigenous leaders, he asserted his identity as an "indio" or an Indigenous person, and he claimed a privileged place of enunciation as cocreator of a collective Indigenous discourse (100). When Richelet removed Garcilasos voice and the voices of Indigenous people Garcilaso took as models for noble speech and action, he enacted a wholesale erasure of Garcilasos voice and of his rhetorical project that belies the notion of the paraphraste's careful "middle ground" theorized by Richelets contemporaries.
In contrast to these examples of omission, Richelet attended more closely to the details in passages about things he frames as natural resources. For example, Garcilaso narrated an episode where the leader of Ychiaha asks several pearl fishers to show De Soto how they extract pearls from their shells. Richelet omitted far less information here than in other passages and carefully reproduced details. In Spanish, De Soto receives a gift of a string of pearls that "era de dos brazas y las perlas como avellanas y todas casi parejas de un tamaño" (was the length of two arms and the pearls like hazelnuts and almost all an equal size; 1030), and Richelet described a very similar "fil de perles denuiron deux brasses . . . elles estoient toutes esgales, & grosses comme des auelines" (string of pearls of around two arms lengths . . . they were all equal and thick like hazelnuts; 2.5). The passage below features Garcilaso's description of methods Indigenous people used to open oysters over a fire alongside Richelet's translation. In a previous example, Richelet used only about one-third the number of words included in the source text in his translation. In this example, Richelet used about two-thirds the number of words used in the source text.
se abrian y daban lugar a que entre la carne de ellas buscasen las perlas. Casi en las primeras conchas que se abrieron, sacaron los indios diez o doce perlas gruesas como garbanzos medianos y las trujeron al curaca y al gobernador, que estaban juntos mirando cómo las sacaban, y vieron que eran muy buenas en toda perfección, salvo que todavía el fuego con su calor y humo les ofendía su buen color natural. (1031)
they opened and it happened that in the flesh of them they looked for pearls. Almost in the first shells that were opened, the Indians took out ten or twelve pearls that were thick as medium-sized garbanzos and brought them to the curaca and the governor, who were together looking at how they extracted them, and saw that they were very good in total perfection, except that the fire with its heat and smoke offended their good natural color.
souurirent a la chaleur. On rencontra à l'ouverture des premieres, 10 ou douze perles de la grosseur d'vn poix que l'on porta au Cacique, & au General qui estoient presens, & qui les trouuerent tres-belles, hormis que le feu leur auoit dérobé une partie de leur esclat. (2-7)
they opened with the heat. One found with the opening of the first ones, ten or twelve pearls the thickness of a pea that they took to the Cacique, and to the General who were present, and that they found very beautiful, except that the smoke had disrobed part of their shine.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, American pearl fisheries were connected to markets across Europe and beyond, functioning as "a crucible of Spanish imperial administration and an early and enduring model of a global commodity trade" (Warsh 6). If paraphrastes privileged their own interpretations of texts as the source material for their translations, these passages on pearls suggest that Richelet interpreted La Florida del Inca as a source of practical information on an extractive global industry.
Richelet's dictionary also indicates that he interpreted Garcilasos passages on pearls as particularly significant ones, as some of the very few explicit references to Garcilaso included in the Dictionnaire françois describe pearl fishing. Richelet defined "Péche" in terms that recall his work as Garcilasos translator: "Lart de prendre des perles. [La péche est bonne. Aller a la pêche. Entendre la pêche. La pêche des perles est admirable. Voiez la-dessus la Floride de Garcillasso de la Vega]" (The art of taking pearls. [The fishing is good. To go fishing. To understand fishing. The pearl fishing is admirable. On this, see la Floride of Garcillasso de la Vega]; Dictionnaire, 2.140, brackets in the original). Furthermore, his entry for "Perle" begins
sorte de pierre prétieuse ronde, longue, plate, en forme de poire, ou de bouton, qui se forme en mer dans la chair des coquilles qu'on pêche aux Indes dans de certaines saisons. Voiez là-dessus, Garcilasso de la Vega, Rélation de la Floride. (2.149)
(sort of stone that is round, long, flat, pear-shaped, or button-shaped, that forms in the sea in the flesh of shellfish that one can fish for in the Indies during certain seasons. On this, see Garcilasso de la Vega, Rélation de la Floride.)
Seventeenth-century European imperial powers shared a "preoccupation with the language of mining and refining," and Richelet echoed that preoccupation in his translation practice (Bigelow 2). He mined select information from Garcilasos text and added it to his dictionary.
In Richelet's practice, paraphrase was about more than performing a restrained middle ground between reproduction and invention. Instead, Richelet moved between erasure and extraction as he translated Garcilaso, omitting or dramatically condensing information that he deemed trivial and more closely re-creating information he deemed useful to French colonial projects. Alexandre Cioranescu posits that French translators during this period were drawn to baroque Spanish texts because they wanted to demonstrate that they could tame prose they considered foreign and excessive. He notes that "les auteurs s'appliquent de préférence a comprimer des matières extravagantes, peut-être pour la satisfaction d'avoir dompter la béte" (the authors preferred to apply themselves to compressing extravagant material, perhaps for the satisfaction of having tamed the beast; 282). Richelet enacted violence over his source text by imposing brevity on Garcilasos narrative. To follow Cioranescu's metaphor, Richelet approached both Garcilasos writing and his authorial identity as beasts to be tamed, thereby situating himself and Garcilaso according to a violent racialized hierarchy, as the next sections of this article will discuss.
4. DUELING LEXICOGRAPHERS
In La Florida del Inca, Garcilaso employed linguistic strategies to contest and correct dehumanizing representations of Indigenous people based in linguistic performance. He disputed what he calls the "reputación universal en que los indios están [de bárbaros)" (the universal reputation the Indians have [of being barbarians]), insisting instead that "hay indios de muy buen entendimiento en paz y en guerra . . . saben hablar como cualquiera otra nación de mucha doctrina" (there are Indigenous people of very good understanding in peace and in War . . . they know how to talk like any other nation of much intelligence; 878). Garcilasos comments on "barbarism" evoke Ian Smiths analysis of this term as a "powerful conceptual template . . . for imagining the outsider" in Renaissance Europe. The "barbarian" was a person exiled from the dominant culture because they did not speak the dominant language (2). The term, as Smith notes, was "used quite liberally as a slur across European cultures where language performance conferred status and provided access to social mobility, barbarism demarcated a cultural division of insiders and outsiders that would eventually sharpen into racial awareness" (2). Garcilaso wrote from the position as someone marked by this slur and as someone who explicitly and emphatically refused it.
Garcilaso proposed a corrective to this dehumanizing notion that linked Indigenous people, stigmatized linguistic performance, and outsider status by using the Spanish word caballero (horseman, cavalier) to refer to both European and Indigenous men who demonstrated nobility through their actions in the context of the De Soto invasion. Garcilaso included a note on the definition of this word:
Este nombre caballero en los Indios parece improprio porque no tuvieron caballos, de los cuales se dedujo el nombre, mas, por que en España se entiende por los nobles, y entre Indios los hubo nobilísimos, se podrá también decir por ellos. (795)
(This name caballero in the Indies seems inappropriate because they did not have horses which is how the name is derived, but because in Spain this word is understood to mean nobles, and among Indigenous people there were very noble people, this word can also be used for them.)
Raquel Chang-Rodríguez points out that by redefining caballero, Garcilaso insisted on the shared humanity of Spanish and Indigenous people ("Introduction" 30). Furthermore, by using the word caballero in this new sense, Garcilaso offered his readers a common language through which to contest a violent hierarchy that falsely positioned European invaders as superior to Indigenous people. Garcilaso rejected the slur bdrbaro and proposed an innovative and capacious use of the Spanish term caballero to resist efforts to create a division between insiders and outsiders that Smith has highlighted.
Pierre Richelet refused to translate Garcilasos definition of caballero as well as the instances where he used this word to describe Indigenous people. His translation of La Florida del Inca illustrates the limits of textual encounters alone to transform readers' prejudices. Richelet first read Garcilaso's discussion and definition of the word caballero in the Spanish source text. After that, he translated those pages into French without including any part of Garcilasos definition; he completely omitted it. Further still, he did not translate the word caballero in any instance where Garcilaso used it to refer to Indigenous people. For example, where Garcilaso recounted that the Indigenous leader Hirrihigua sent "quatro hombres nobles y caballeros" (four noble men and chevaliers) to meet Spanish invaders, Richelet replaced the phrase with "quatre des principaux de ses Sujets" (four of his principal Subjects; 795; 1.74).
I read Richelet's choices to exclude Garcilaso's definition of caballero and uses of this word from his translation not as mistakes or oversights but as deliberate and significant choices. Richelet refused to translate Garcilaso in these instances. As a French tutor to international travelers in Paris, Richelet may have recommended that his students acquire a copy of Cesar Oudin's 1660 Tresor de deux langues, a widely consulted bilingual Spanish and French dictionary published in many editions throughout the seventeenth century (Zuilli 282). Oudin translated the Spanish word caballero as chevalier, and the Spanish word noble as noble, gentil-homme, thus these words were not considered untranslatable by Richelets contemporaries (Oudin 127, 482). Yet Richelet chose to translate nobles and caballeros with the terms principaux and sujet[s] rather than use chevalier, noble, or gentil-homme, the terms preferred by his contemporary Oudin. Years later, in his Dictionnaire françois, Richelet defined chevalier as a person "qui est d'un ordre de chevalerie" (who belongs to an order of chivalry), thus continuing to refuse Garcilaso's call to reconceptualize this term (1.133). It is worth noting that the 1725 edition of Antoine Furetière's dictionary expands the notion of chevalier to echo Garcilasos innovative description, specifying that the term denotes "une qualité d'honneur sans Ordre de Chevalerie" (a quality of honor without Order of Chivalry; n.p.).
In another well-known passage from La Florida del Inca, Garcilaso ties together his identity, voice, and linguistic project. He bases his choice to use the words curaca and cacique interchangeably to refer to Indigenous rulers in "la Florida" on his personal experience as a speaker of Quechua and a person indigenous to Peru:
Este nombre curaca, en lengua general de los indios del Perú, significa lo mismo que cacique en lenguaje de la isla Española y sus circunvecinas, que es señor de vasallos. Y pues yo soy indio del Perú y no de S. Domingo ni sus comarcanas se me permita que yo introduzga [sic] algunos vocablos de mi lenguaje en esta mi obra, porque se vea que soy natural de aquella tierra y no de otra. (823)
(This name curaca, in the general language of the Indians of Peru, means the same as cacique in the language of the island of Española and its surroundings, which is lord of vassals. And since I am an Indian of Peru not of S. Domingo or its surroundings, I may be permitted to introduce some words from my language in this my work, so it is clear that Tam native to that land and not any other.)
Here, Garcilaso traced the contours of a vast continent full of speakers of Indigenous languages, situated himself in a particular location, and taught his Spanish readers Quechua. Margarita Zamora reads this explanation of curaca and cacique as Garcilasos work to underscore his own identity as a descendant of Inca rulers (237), and Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino views it as evidence of Garcilasos powerful "sentimiento de lealtad idiomática" (sentiment of language loyalty; 163) and efforts to peruanizar, or "peruvianize," the Spanish language in defense of the Inca language and civilization (164, quotes in the original). In the pages that follow, Garcilasos interchangeable use of the words curaca and cacique to refer to the same people also reinforce his initial definitions. Through repetition, Garcilaso attempted to teach his reader words in Indigenous American languages as they read.
In La Florida del Inca, Garcilaso asserted his authority as a Quechua speaker and the embodied position from which he spoke. In Histoire de la Floride, Richelet foregrounded his own voice and role in shaping language by transforming Garcilasos lengthy explanation of the words curaca and cacique into a minuscule margin note. When Richelet referenced "le Cacique Hirriga Hirriga, he added to the margin "Ou Curaca, c'est la mesme chose" (Or Curaca, its the same thing; 1.72). The visual economy of the page highlights the translator's voice and linguistic authority even as Richelet obscured Garcilaso voice and authority. Furthermore, the marginal note is the only instance where the word curaca appears in the French translation. Throughout the rest of the text, Richelet exclusively used the word cacique to refer to Indigenous leaders. Richelet extended his work to act as an arbiter of the French lexicon in his 1680 Dictionnaire francois, where he did not include an entry for cacique or curaca."
Garcilaso and Richelet both presented themselves to readers as language experts, but Richelet asserted his claims to expertise by erasing Garcilasos contributions. Garcilaso used his privileged knowledge of Quechua, his maternal language, to legitimate his role as a historian in Comentarios reales (Zamora 235). La Florida also showcases his use of innovative language practices to challenge how his Spanish readers conceptualized the Americas. Richelet's identity as a lexicographer grew from his work as secretary to translator Ablancourt and as a French language tutor. Before he began translating La Florida, Richelet worked with Frémont d'Ablancourt to revise a dictionary of rhymes, and by the time he began translating Garcilaso he had already begun considering a larger project to study and compile French vocabulary (Bray 233). However, rather than recognize Garcilaso as a fellow language expert, Richelet consistently refused to translate or to engage Garcilasos lexicon.
To be clear, I am not arguing that Richelet mistranslated Garcilaso or made a mistake when he omitted Garcilaso terms in his own dictionary. Such an assertion would hinge on the false idea that an accurate or definitive translation of any text is possible, an idea that translation theorists have long disputed (Venuti 5). In addition, suggesting that Richelet's translation choices are mistakes or mistranslations would deny Richelets agency and intelligence. Instead, I am arguing that Richelet made deliberate translation choices and that he was an agent of significant cultural work. Richelet did not just omit Garcilasos ideas and Indigenous words from his translation; he refused to translate them. His acts of refusal generated his own claims to social and cultural power, as the next section of this article will explore further.
5. TRANSLATION AS EMBODIED PRACTICE
For Richelet, producing a French translation that his contemporaries would judge superior to the source text meant participating in a collective cultural and political project to claim the dominance of French over other languages as well as asserting his individual social status as a privileged insider. In the seventeenth century, the French elite increasingly grew to understand their vernacular not as a degenerate version of Latin but as a modern, autonomous language progressing toward a future point of fixity and perfection. For example, Charles Sorels Bibliotheqve Françoise (1664) explains that new translations of ancient texts into French will only be necessary "iusques a ce que nostre Langue soit plus fixe quelle nest, & quand elle le seroit, on approuueroit Temulation des Traducteurs" (until our Language is more stable than it is now, and when it is, one will approve of emulating Translators; 240). For Sorel and for Richelet, translation into French was part of a process they imagined would culminate in a definitive, unchanging French language that, crucially, was superior to other vernacular languages if not also ancient ones. French translations functioned as an instrument to help discern how close the vernacular was to this imagined final point of fixity by enabling the comparative evaluation of source and target texts.
But while the French vernacular grew in power and prestige over the course of the seventeenth century, Latin still overshadowed French in many spaces throughout the seventeenth century, particularly in the schools of the nation's elite. Members of the French elite saw themselves as fighting against the idea of their own linguistic inferiority to Greek and Latin from a defensive position (Melzer, Colonizer 139). For them, the triumph of French over other vernacular languages like Castilian, which was also widely studied and used in seventeenth-century France, was not necessarily a foregone conclusion. The status of the French language had the power to determine the status of its speakers as privileged or stigmatized in an international context.
In his dictionary, Richelet endeavored to construct and reinforce a boundary between a group of privileged insiders, whom he called the "honnétes gens qui aiment notre langage" (honest people who love our language), and stigmatized outsiders, who threated the purity of this language ("Avertissement"). He labeled outsiders with a range of unstable signifiers: "barbares" (barbarians), "les peuples septentrionaux" (northern people), and "indiens" (Indians). When Richelet constructed and reinforced this insider/outsider distinction, he asserted a racialized identity. Geraldine Heng offers a framework for understanding racial constructions across time not as a "substantive content" (27) but as a "repeating tendency, of the gravest import, to demarcate human beings through differences among humans that are selectively essentialized as absolute and fundamental, in order to distribute positions and powers differentially to human groups" (27; italics in original). Richelet essentialized linguistic performance to "construct a hierarchy of peoples for differential treatment" that allowed him to claim a privileged position, a process consistent with Hengs understanding of racial construction (27).
Patricia Akhimie tracks racist thinking in the early modern period as processes of social differentiation that intertwine class, race, and other social groupings and code them as either mobile or immobile. For Akhimie, early modern racialism "involved a spectrum of mutability to immutability, a hierarchy in which those at the top could change themselves and those at the bottom could not" (8). Attending to the terms Richelet used to mark social outsiders reveals his work to construct a hierarchy based on language and geography that is significant not only as a form of violence against those Richelet excluded but also as a means for Richelet to reap benefits for himself, thus producing his own racialized subjectivity.
By developing discourse on "barbarism," Richelet posited himself as an arbiter of linguistic purity. In his Lart poétique, French classicist poet and critic Nicolas Boileau decried the use of "pompeaux barbarismes" (pompous barbarisms), or Greek and Latin words clumsily adapted to French usage (1.159). In his dictionary, Richelet explained that "barbare" referred to language, words, and people: "Il signifie qui est étranger a la langue, qui est mauvais, & qui n'y est pas reçu" (It means what is foreign to the language, what is wrong, and what is not acceptable; 1.64, italics in the original). Richelet defined a "barbarisme" as a "vice contre la pureté du langage. On fait un barbarisme en disant un mot qui nest pas Francois, en usant d'une phrase qui est hors d'usage" (vice against the purity of the language. One commits a barbarism in saying a word that isn't French, in using a phrase that is out of usage; 1.64). Richelet positioned himself as a judge of the boundaries between pure and impure, foreignness and belonging, right and wrong, contemporary and out of date.
In Richelet's dictionary, entries on "barbare," "barbares," and "barbarie" build on a paradigm where "barbarism" is constructed as linguistic difference to then link this idea to geographic difference. The Dictionnaire françois asserts, "Les peuples Septentrionnaux sont les plus barbares de tous les peoples" (The people of the Septentrion are the most barbarous of all people; 64). Richelet drew from ancient Roman authors who represented the North as a "terra incognita formant la limite septentrionale de la civilisation, une terre de barbarie" (terra incognita forming the northern limit of civilization, a land of barbarism) and extended this notion to include Indigenous Americans in Histoire de la Floride (Briens 182-83, italics in the original). Garcilaso referred to people or things as "bárbaro" approximately thirteen times in La Florida, usually in reference to Spanish preconceptions about Indigenous people. However, Richelet used the word barbare approximately 153 times in his translation because he translated the Spanish word indio as both "indien" and "barbare" By using the word barbare as a synonym for indien in his translation of La Florida del Inca, Richelet constructed a violent division that invoked both linguistic performance and geography.
Richelet's translation and dictionary drew connections between the terms barbare, peuples septentrionaux, and indien while at the same time using them in flexible ways. For Ayanna Thompson, "the malleability and inconsistency of racialized discourses in the early modern period" are not evidence of an absence of racialized epistemology; rather, they are emblematic of the "inconsistent and opportunistic" constructions of race that are central to racial formation (8). Noémie Ndiaye likewise theorizes early modern race as a "concept best modeled as a matrix" because it is "a womblike space producing and nurturing paradigms" and a category that is fertile in its ability to "keep generating new paradigms without terminating older ones" (4-5). Richelet built on an understanding of "barbare" inherited from Greco-Roman thought and incorporated an idea of geographic distinction that extended into North America. Critic Sylvain Briens uses the term borealisme to theorize a grammar of the North made up of discourses emerging from scientific exploration, the colonization of northern spaces, and the representation of fantasy spaces:
Le Nord incarne absence de sons, de couleur, de chaleur, de personnes. . . . Il est perçu par la Sud comme un espace non peuplé et sans épaisseur culturelle . . . et donc sur lequel on peut projeter ce que l'on veut. Cette faible épaisseur discursive place le narrateur qui veut dire le Nord dans la situation privilégiée du pionnier. (181)
(The North embodies the absence of sound, color, warmth, people. . . . It is perceived by the South as a place without people or cultural thickness . . . and thus onto which one can project what one wishes. This discursive thinness situates the narrator who wishes to describe the North in the privileged position of the pioneer.)
In my analysis, by linking the Septentrion, the idea of "barbarism," and Indigenous Americans in his translation and his dictionary, Richelet dehumanized those he categorized as other even as he constructed his own position as a speaker occupying a geographic and symbolic center.
Richelet used translation to produce a racialized subjectivity for himself and to racialize the author and the text he translated. He suggested that a lexicon itself could be either "barbaric" or "pure" based on what words were included and excluded, and he fashioned himself as an arbiter of linguistic purity by excising so-called barbarisms, thereby locating himself in place of privilege. He reinforced the notion that linguistic performance determined a language user's position in a social hierarchy. But whereas Richelet used language to attempt to improve his own position, he posited geographic location, whether in the Septentrion or the Americas, to cast other people as immutable outsiders.
6. RICHELET REMEMBERED
Eleven years after Richelet's death, in the preface to a 1709 edition of Histoire de la Floride (this time titled Histoire de la conqueste de la Floride), historian and critic Nicolas Lenglet du Frenoy (1674-1755) juxtaposed the work of metaphraste Baudoin, translator of Garcilasos Comentarios reales, and paraphraste Richelet. Fresnoy posited that Baudoin' translation was less artful because he was motivated primarily by earning wages: "Une version juste, exacte, concise coüte du temps, & le temps ne lui étoit pas payé par ses Libraires" (An accurate, exact, concise version costs time, and Booksellers did not pay him for his time; "Avertissement"). According to Fresnoy, failing to meet these criteria made Baudoin's translation of Garcilaso "méconnoissable en le travestissant en nôtre langue" (unrecognizable able by costuming it in our language; "Avertissement"). Fresnoy contrasted Baudoin's metaphrase with Richelet's paraphrase, noting that "on ne pouvoit pas dire la méme chose" (one could not say the same thing) about Richelet, thus implying that Histoire de la Floride did meet the criteria of accuracy, exactness, and conciseness. Fresnoy even affirmed that "Ton quel homme étoit M. Richelet, pour la pureté de nôtre langue. Et si l'on veut faire concevoir quelque chose dexact, & de chatié il suffit de dire que cette Version est de lui" (one knows what man Richelet was, by the purity of his language. And if one wants to show evidence of something exact and disciplined it suffices to say that this version belongs to him; "Avertissement," italics in the original). Fresnoy made a connection between Richelet's capacity to discipline and purify his source text and his social status, the kind of "man Richelet was"
While in his lifetime and beyond, Richelet was known as Garcilasos translator, today he is best-known for his dictionary, and examining his translation of Garcilaso brings greater understanding to the logic of omission that shapes it. Jacques Damade has called the Dictionnaire francois an "élégante[] auberge[] de carême" (elegant Lenten refuge) and a "superbe mercredi de cendres du langage" (superb Ash Wednesday of language) because it operates "encore bien davantage par omission que par prescription" (even more by omission than by prescription; 12). He argues that Richelet attempted to solidify a modern version of the French language that could take the place of Latin as a universal language used across Louis XIV's empire (9-10). Indeed, Richelet personifies his French lexicon in the dedication pages of his dictionary as a soldier who "dispute de la beauté avec toutes les langues mortes" (disputes for beauty with all the dead languages; n.p.). The image of "forcible translation" links lexicography with imperial competition (Fuchs 21). At the same time, Richelet's practice as a paraphraste of Garcilaso deeply informed his approach to his dictionary. In both projects, he worked from a defensive position to filter out words or ideas that threatened to complicate his claims to social and linguistic superiority. Furthermore, both Histoire de la Floride and the Dictionnaire francois stand out for an exaggerated conciseness that challenges the ideas of practicing moderation or finding middle ground typically associated with paraphrase.
Studying Richelet's actual translation practice reveals dimensions of early modern paraphrase that go beyond conventional understandings based in theories alone. Richelets contemporaries described paraphrase as a form of translation based on the translator's interpretation of the source text. Present-day readers may associate paraphrase with Dryden's conventional definition as the means between two extremes: neither following the author's words too strictly nor losing the author from sight entirely. Hayes has argued that for early modern translators in France and England, paraphrase provided the model for an innovative translational subjectivity that challenged the primacy of the author (112).
However, comparing representative passages from La Florida del Inca and Histoire de la Floride reveals that for Richelet, paraphrase was also a translation practice that moved between extraction and omission and was informed by colonial attitudes toward land aspirationally framed as French outposts in North America. Paraphrase was also more than an intellectual project or a search for a new form of intellectual subjectivity. In Richelet's practice, paraphrase also produced a racialized subjectivity for the translator, one where he constructed his own status as geographic center and arbiter of linguistic purity to claim a place among the local elite and distance himself from those he coded as other, particularly the Indigenous and mestizo author of the text he translated, and the Spanish soldiers and Indigenous leaders present in that text.
Closely attending to Richelet' translation also reveals Garcilasos influence on the history of the French language and on early modern cultures of translation. Garcilaso appears in the Dictionnaire françois in explicit references to La Florida del Inca, but he also appears in the omissions and refusals that structure the dictionary. Even though Richelet rejected Garcilasos innovative use of language as a corrective to false narratives that dehumanized Indigenous Americans, Garcilasos ideas are still present as part of the process Richelet used to create his dictionary. Garcilaso's influence also extends to early modern French theories of translation. Gilles Ménage, Pierre Richelet, and Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy all implicitly cite Garcilasos work as they endeavor to distinguish between metaphrase and paraphrase and to evaluate the relative success of translations that follow either model.
For Richelet and some of his readers, Garcilaso's language represented a challenge to be overcome to arrive at a final, definitive version of French that could operate as an imperial lingua franca. Reading Richelet's translation alongside his source text, however, also creates occasions to return to Garcilaso's text not as something to be simplified or appropriated but as a meticulous intellectual project that continues to require renewed translation and interpretation.
NOTES
1. In this article, I use the broad term "Indigenous American" to refer to people with historical connections to precolonial or presettler land in the American Hemisphere.
2. All English translations are mine unless otherwise noted.
3. Anna Brickhouse speculates that Garcilaso may have met Algonquin-speaking Don Luis de Velasco and the Indigenous people from Ajacán and Mexico with whom he traveled while they passed through King Philip's court in Spain (114-15).
4. Between 1660 and 1670, Clousier also published Les fameux voyages de Pietro Della Valle (1661-65), a translation of an Italian narrative that described travels across "la Turquie, 'Egypte, la Palestine, la Perse & les Indes Orientales" (Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Persia, and the East Indies), Relation nouvelle et curieuse des royaumes de Tunquin et de Lao (1666), and Cosmographie et pelerinage du monde universel (1669) by P. Jourdain, which he edited in collaboration with two other printers.
5. Histoire de la Floride, later titled Histoire de la conquéte de la Floride, was published in Paris in 1670 by Clouzier, in 1709 by Nyon, in 1711 by Nyon, and in 1711 by Musier. It was published in Leiden in 1731 and 1735 by Van der Aa and in Amsterdam in 1737 by Bernard. Histoire des Yncas was published in Amsterdam in 1704 by Kuyper, in 1715 by Desbordes, and in 1737 by Bernard.
6. English translations of these paratexts are available on page 114 of The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology (2001), edited by Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer.
7. Antoine Furetiére's 1690 dictionary presents a contrast by including terms from relations de voyage to expand knowledge networks and integrate ideas that had previously been excluded (Melzer, "Le Furetiere" 141).
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