The Florentine Now Analysis

In the times of America’s discovery, most European literature was based on voyages to the New World. However, most didn’t convey the truth about the culture they encountered in an informed or unbiased way. An exception to this is Sahagun’s encounter with the Aztec’s which is described in an encyclopedic way and even used people from that culture to describe it. However other writers like John Smith, appeal to the understanding and interests of Europeans by writing the narrative they want to hear. In this paper I will discuss why Sahagun’s form of creating his manuscript on a culture is much better and more informed than Smith’s because it conveys the most accurate truth about a certain culture.
Sahagun’s writing, popularly called the Florentine
Just to make it more popular? The answer is clear when we consider that in his other writings he advertises the New World as perfect and ideal. He suggested that going to the New World is a chance to recreate yourself and live a pleasurable life with no problems. Therefore, by showing how the natives are so very kind with the Pocahontas story, they might also be tempted to come. In one of his manuscripts he writes: “What pleasure can be more than to recreate themselves before their own doors, in their boats upon the sea; where man, woman and child, … may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their pleasures?” (Smith 124). In this way he tries to lure people by comparing coming to the New World as a pleasure and a relaxing place to start again. He also writes that work is not a necessity as by working just three days a week one would get more than he can spend (Smith 124-125). Again, we can see that he is embellishing and exaggerating to get people to come to the New World because he wants them to colonize it as they are already a century behind the other Europeans in their
Sahagun wanted to convert the Aztecs so he made an extremely accurate in-depth study about them and Smith wanted to convince people to colonize the New World, so he created an advertisement for it through his writings. In addition, Sahagun is much more accurate because he got all his information from people of that culture, while Smith wrote about what he perceived these indigenous people’s culture to be like. This method makes not only for the most accurate results, but leads to us knowing much more about a culture, than a writing like Smith’s which is completely