Description
Book SynopsisSeafaring 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.
Trade Review"This is a timely collection of essays that provides students and scholars of early modernity with new perspectives and insights on the importance of shipwrecks as a major cultural and political event. For all the authors in the volume, a shipwreck is the unavoidable partner of empire and colonial expansion, signaling the perilous path of conquest and at the same time revealing the fissures of the entire imperial enterprise. Going beyond rhetoric, the volume argues for a more comprehensive approach to shipwrecks, defined as significant cultural events that expose not only the precarious nature of imperial expansion and colonial rule, but also issues related to gender, sexuality, identity, and morality." -- Luis Avilés * author of Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los Siglos de Oro *
"Rodríguez-Guridi and Ruiz's
Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World is an excellent example of the rich interdisciplinary orientation that prevails in the field of Early Modern Hispanic Studies, providing fertile ground for in-depth analyses on resistance to Spanish conquest and colonization." -- Raúl Marrero-Fente * author of Epic, Empire, and Community in the Atlantic World: Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de paciencia *
"
Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World is perhaps the only English-language collection of essays structured around this central theme or metaphor in recent times. Now that a number of literary critics, cultural studies scholars, and historians are working on maritime matters in the Spanish-speaking world, the chapters of this book offer a distinctive way of looking at topics relevant to these scholars and to early modernists, generally." -- Elizabeth Davis * author of Myth and Identity in the Epic of Imperial Spain *
"This is a timely collection of essays that provides students and scholars of early modernity with new perspectives and insights on the importance of shipwrecks as a major cultural and political event. For all the authors in the volume, a shipwreck is the unavoidable partner of empire and colonial expansion, signaling the perilous path of conquest and at the same time revealing the fissures of the entire imperial enterprise. Going beyond rhetoric, the volume argues for a more comprehensive approach to shipwrecks, defined as significant cultural events that expose not only the precarious nature of imperial expansion and colonial rule, but also issues related to gender, sexuality, identity, and morality." -- Luis Avilés * author of Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los Siglos de Oro *
"Rodríguez-Guridi and Ruiz's
Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World is an excellent example of the rich interdisciplinary orientation that prevails in the field of Early Modern Hispanic Studies, providing fertile ground for in-depth analyses on resistance to Spanish conquest and colonization." -- Raúl Marrero-Fente * author of Epic, Empire, and Community in the Atlantic World: Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de pacienc *
"
Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World is perhaps the only English-language collection of essays structured around this central theme or metaphor in recent times. Now that a number of literary critics, cultural studies scholars, and historians are working on maritime matters in the Spanish-speaking world, the chapters of this book offer a distinctive way of looking at topics relevant to these scholars and to early modernists, generally." -- Elizabeth Davis * author of Myth and Identity in the Epic of Imperial Spain *
Table of ContentsForeword
Josiah Blackmore
Introduction
Elena Rodríguez-Guridi and Carrie L. Ruiz
Chapter 1: Turbulent Waters: Shipwreck in Zayas’s “Tarde llega el desengaño”
Carrie L. Ruiz
Chapter 2: Two Small and Two Large Imperial Shipwrecks by Cervantes and Góngora
Julio Baena
Chapter 3: The Reader as Castaway: Problematics of Reading
Soledades by Luis de Góngora
Elena Rodríguez-Guridi
Chapter 4: On Moral Truth and the Controversy over the Amerindians: The
Relación (1542), by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
Natalio Ohanna
Chapter 5: The Discourse of Poverty in Cabeza de Vaca’s
Naufragios Fernando Rodríguez Mansilla
Chapter 6: Shipwreck, Exile, and Political Critique in the
Comedia de Fernán Méndez Pinto en China (1631) by Antonio Enríquez Gómez
Carmen Hsu
Chapter 7: The Manila Galleon Shipwrecks: Writing Crisis and Decline in the Spanish Global Empire
Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez
Chapter 8: The Shipwreck of the Manila Galleon
San Felipe in Seventeenth-Century Histories and Accounts on Japan
Noemí Martín Santo
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
