Claudio Veliz
The New World of the Gothic Fox
Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America
$60.00, £41.95 hardcover
9780520083165
Available Now
Claudio Véliz adopts the provocative metaphor of foxes and hedgehogs that Isaiah Berlin used to describe opposite types of thinkers. Applying this metaphor to modern culture, economic systems, and the history of the New World, Véliz provides an original and lively approach to understanding the development of English and Spanish America over the past 500 years.
According to Véliz, the dominant cultural achievements of Europe's English- and Spanish-speaking peoples have been the Industrial Revolution and the Counter-Reformation, respectively. These overwhelming cultural constructions have strongly influenced the subsequent historical developments of their great cultural outposts in North and South America. The British brought to the New World a stubborn ability to thrive on diversity and change that was entirely consistent with their vernacular Gothic style. The Iberians, by contrast, brought a cultural tradition shaped like a vast baroque dome, a monument to their successful attempt to arrest the changes that threatened their imperial moment.
Véliz writes with erudition and wit, using a multitude of sources—historians and classical sociologists, Greek philosophers, today's newspaper sports pages, and modern literature—to support a novel explanation of the prosperity and expanding cultural influence of the gothic fox and the economic and cultural decline endured by the baroque hedgehog.
According to Véliz, the dominant cultural achievements of Europe's English- and Spanish-speaking peoples have been the Industrial Revolution and the Counter-Reformation, respectively. These overwhelming cultural constructions have strongly influenced the subsequent historical developments of their great cultural outposts in North and South America. The British brought to the New World a stubborn ability to thrive on diversity and change that was entirely consistent with their vernacular Gothic style. The Iberians, by contrast, brought a cultural tradition shaped like a vast baroque dome, a monument to their successful attempt to arrest the changes that threatened their imperial moment.
Véliz writes with erudition and wit, using a multitude of sources—historians and classical sociologists, Greek philosophers, today's newspaper sports pages, and modern literature—to support a novel explanation of the prosperity and expanding cultural influence of the gothic fox and the economic and cultural decline endured by the baroque hedgehog.
"A wide-ranging book like this inevitably raises more questions than it answers, which is of course an invitation to a provocative read. Its great merit is to bring questions of religious, traditional and cultural construction back to center stage."—Foreign Affairs
"Véliz's book can be welcomed as a valuable corrective to studies of British and Iberian colonial America which have for too long treated them in transatlantic isolation, making little or no reference to their countries of origin—countries with which they maintained a continuous contact, and against which, consciously and unconsciously, they constantly measured themselves."—New York Review of Books
"This is an erudite book . . . . Mr Véliz roams confidently over the architecture of Jesuit churches, the spread of Athenian culture in Asia Minor, the source of deodorants and the origin of 'Happy Birthday'. The result is thought-provoking."—The Economist
"Véliz has written a book that reflects a tenor of our times. . . . Véliz seeks to connect a closed, hermetic, and Counter Reformationist disposition of Iberians . . . with the failures to adapt to contemporary strides of industrial and consumer society."—American Historical Review
"Véliz's book can be welcomed as a valuable corrective to studies of British and Iberian colonial America which have for too long treated them in transatlantic isolation, making little or no reference to their countries of origin—countries with which they maintained a continuous contact, and against which, consciously and unconsciously, they constantly measured themselves."—New York Review of Books
"This is an erudite book . . . . Mr Véliz roams confidently over the architecture of Jesuit churches, the spread of Athenian culture in Asia Minor, the source of deodorants and the origin of 'Happy Birthday'. The result is thought-provoking."—The Economist
"Véliz has written a book that reflects a tenor of our times. . . . Véliz seeks to connect a closed, hermetic, and Counter Reformationist disposition of Iberians . . . with the failures to adapt to contemporary strides of industrial and consumer society."—American Historical Review
Latin American History Bestsellers
