In recent years scholars have turned their attention to the rich experience of the Jesuits in France and Spain’s American colonies. That attention has brought a flow of new editions and translations of Jesuit accounts of the Americas; it is now time for a study that examines the full range of that work in a comparative perspective. Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas offers the first comprehensive examination of such writings and the role they played in solidifying images of the Americas.

The collection also provides a much-needed re-examination of the work of the Jesuits in relation to Enlightenment ideals and the modern social sciences and humanities – two systems of thought that have in the past appeared radically opposed, but which are brought together here under the rubric of modern ethnographic knowledge. Linking Jesuit texts, the rhetorical tradition, and the newly emerging anthropology of the Enlightenment, this collection traverses the vast expanses of Old and New World France and Spain in fascinating new ways.

Marc André Bernier is the Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric at l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières.

Marc André Bernier's profile page

Clorinda Donato is a professor of French and Italian at California State University, Long Beach, and director of the Clorinda Donato Center for Global Romance Languages and Translation Studies.

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Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink is a senior professor in the Department of Romance Literatures, Languages, and Cultures at Saarland University and co-director (with Susanne Greilich) of a research project on the translation of eighteenth-century encyclopedias funded by the DFG (German Research Council).

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"This volume will be incredibly useful for scholars wanting to delve deeper into understanding the very nature of Jesuit writings and their significance at the dawn of modernity. Using a comparative approach, Jesuit Accounts of the Colonial Americas offers eighteen well-presented essays that lay the essential groundwork for a field of study undergoing a dramatic renewal."

<em>Dalhousie French Studies</em>

"This volume is indeed an important contribution in the field of Jesuit studies... "

Journal of Early Modern History 22

‘This book will be useful for scholars willing to know more about the role of American Jesuits at the turn to modernity… It will stimulate further studies about the relationship of American Jesuits with the dissemination of knowledge they produced.’

The Sixteenth Century Journal vol 47:04:2016

‘This is an outstanding contribution, one that focuses primarily on the literary and philosophical nature of Enlightenment period Jesuit accounts of America.’

Renaissance Quarterly vol 68:04:2014