Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Carrie L. Ruiz, Elena Rodríguez-Guridi, Carrie L. Ruiz, Elena Rodríguez-Guridi

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781684483709, 9781684483716
• eBook ISBN: 9781684483723
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Literature

Seafaring activity for trade and travel was dominant throughout the Spanish Empire, and in the worldview and imagination of its inhabitants, the specter of shipwreck loomed large. Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World probes this preoccupation by examining portrayals of nautical disasters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature and culture. The essays collected here showcase shipwreck's symbolic deployment to question colonial expansion and transoceanic trade; to critique the Christian enterprise overseas; to signal the collapse of dominant social order; and to relay moral messages and represent socio-political debates. The contributors find examples in poetry, theater, narrative fiction, and other print artifacts, and approach the topic variously through the lens of historical, literary, and cultural studies. Ultimately demonstrating how shipwrecks both shaped and destabilized perceptions of the Spanish Empire worldwide, this analytically rich volume is the first in Hispanic studies to investigate the darker side of mercantile and imperial expansion through maritime disaster.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Turbulent Waters: Shipwreck in María de Zayas’s “Tarde llega el desengaño”
• 2. Two Small and Two Large Imperial Shipwrecks by Miguel de Cervantes and Luis de Góngora
• 3. The Reader as Castaway: Problematics of Reading Soledades by Luis de Góngora
• 4. On Moral Truth and the Controversy over the Amerindians: The Relación (1542) by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
• 5. The Discourse of Poverty in Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragios
• 6. Shipwreck, Exile, and Political Critique in Fernán Méndez Pinto (1631) by Antonio Enríquez Gómez
• 7. The Manila Galleon Shipwrecks: Writing Crisis and Decline in the Spanish Global Empire
• 8. The Shipwreck of the Manila Galleon San Felipe in Seventeenth-Century Histories and Accounts on Japan
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index