A vivid account of the literary culture of the Spanish-speaking Americas from the time of Columbus to Latin American Independence, this Very Short Introduction explores the origins of Latin American literature in Spanish and tells the story of how Spanish literary language developed and flourished in the New World. A leading scholar of colonial Latin American literature, Rolena Adorno examines the writings that debated the justice of the Spanish conquests, described the novelties of New World nature, expressed the creativity of Hispanic baroque culture in epic, lyric, and satirical poetry, and anticipated Latin American Independence. The works of Spanish, creole, and Amerindian authors highlighted here, including Bartolomé de las Casas, Felipe Guaman Poma, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Andrés Bello, have been chosen for the merits of their writings, their participation in the larger literary and cultural debates of their times, and their resonance among readers today. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Literature & Fiction

Adorno, Rolena

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

In the midst of native people's discontent following Spanish conquest, a native Andean born after the fall of the Incas took up the pen to protest Spanish rule. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote his Nueva corónica y buen gobierno to inform Philip III of Spain about the evils of colonialism and the need for governmental and societal reform. By examining Guaman Poma's verbal and visual engagement with the institutions of Western art and culture, Rolena Adorno shows how he performed a comprehensive critique of the colonialist discourse of religion, political theory, and history. She argues that Guaman Poma's work chronicles the emergence of a uniquely Latin American voice, characterized by the articulation of literary art and politics. Following the initial appearance of Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, the 1990s witnessed the creation of a range of new studies that underscore the key role of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno in facilitating our understanding of the Andean and Spanish colonial pasts. At the same time, the documentary record testifying to Guaman Poma's life and work has expanded dramatically, thanks to the publication of long-known but previously inaccessible drawings and documents. In a new, lengthy introduction to this second edition, Adorno shows how recent scholarship from a variety of disciplinary perspectives sheds new light on Guaman Poma and his work, and she offers an important new assessment of his biography in relation to the creation of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno.

Guaman Poma : Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru: Second Edition (ILAS Special Publication)

University of Texas Press

In the midst of native people's discontent following Spanish conquest, a native Andean born after the fall of the Incas took up the pen to protest Spanish rule. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala wrote his Nueva corónica y buen gobierno to inform Philip III of Spain about the evils of colonialism and the need for governmental and societal reform. By examining Guaman Poma's verbal and visual engagement with the institutions of Western art and culture, Rolena Adorno shows how he performed a comprehensive critique of the colonialist discourse of religion, political theory, and history. She argues that Guaman Poma's work chronicles the emergence of a uniquely Latin American voice, characterized by the articulation of literary art and politics. Following the initial appearance of Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, the 1990s witnessed the creation of a range of new studies that underscore the key role of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno in facilitating our understanding of the Andean and Spanish colonial pasts. At the same time, the documentary record testifying to Guaman Poma's life and work has expanded dramatically, thanks to the publication of long-known but previously inaccessible drawings and documents. In a new, lengthy introduction to this second edition, Adorno shows how recent scholarship from a variety of disciplinary perspectives sheds new light on Guaman Poma and his work, and she offers an important new assessment of his biography in relation to the creation of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno.

Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Latin American Monographs / Institute of Latin American Studies, No. 86)

Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Latin American Monograph)

In this book on early Latin American narrative, Rolena Adorno argues that the foundations of the Latin American literary tradition are located in the writings that debated the rights to Spanish dominion in the Americas and the treatment of its natives. Placing the works of canonical Spanish and Amerindian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Bartolomé de las Casas in particular—within this larger polemic, she shows how their works sought credibility through reference to the narrative accounts they followed or contradicted, rather than the historical events they sought to defend or condemn. Demonstrating how these authors and their protagonists have been polemically reinvented in narrative form up to the present day, Adorno elucidates the role the “polemics of possession” played in the development of Latin American literary and political discourse.

The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative

United States

Yale University Press

Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World

Since its original appearance in 1949, Irving A. Leonard's pioneering Books of the Brave has endured as the classic account of the introduction of literary culture to the Spanish New World. Leonard's study documents the works of fiction that accompanied and followed the conquistadores to the Americas and argues that popular texts influenced these men and shaped the way they thought and wrote about their experiences.\nUC Press's 1992 edition combines Leonard's text with a selection of the documents that were his most valuable sources—nine lists of books destined for the Indies. Containing a wealth of information, these lists provide the documentary evidence for what is perhaps Leonard's greatest contribution: his demonstration that royal and inquisitorial prohibitions failed to control the circulation of books and ideas in colonial Spanish America.\nRolena Adorno's introduction reaffirms the lasting value of Books of the Brave and chronicles developments in cultural-historical studies that have shed light on the role of books in Spanish American colonial culture. Adorno situates Leonard's work at the threshold between older, triumphalist views of Spanish conquest history and more recent perspectives engendered by studies of native American peoples.\nWith its rich descriptions of the book trade in both Spain and America, Books of the Brave has much to offer historians as well as literary critics. Indeed, it is a highly readable and engaging book for anyone interested in the cultural life of the New World. 
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

Leonard, Irving A.

University of California Press

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s account of the doomed Narváez expedition to the vast unexplored lands beyond the northern frontier of New Spain has long been heralded as the quintessential tale of the European confronting the wilderness of North America and its native inhabitants for the first time. After living captive among native peoples of the present-day Texas coast for almost six years, Cabeza de Vaca traveled overland through present-day western Texas and northern Mexico until being reunited with his countrymen near the Pacific coast. His account offers an isolated glimpse of areas of Gulf coastal Texas and northeastern Mexico that would not be visited again by Europeans for over 150 years and is the earliest authentic eyewitness description of the North American bison. Volume 1 presents the first modern edition of Cabeza de Vaca’s original 1542 relación and a new, annotated, facing-page English translation. It concludes with a newly researched study of Cabeza de Vaca’s life. Volume 2 analyzes the narrative in discrete segments, putting into context Cabeza de Vaca’s descriptions of the landscape, ecology, and peoples he encountered. It also includes new research into the preparations of Narváez’s expedition in Spain and a fresh study of the lives and fates of Cabeza de Vaca’s three surviving companions. Volume 3 considers the literary and historical contexts of Cabeza de Vaca’s relación. The literary inquiry examines the work’s creation, publication history, and literary and cultural legacy from the sixteenth century to the present. The historical analysis presents new studies of Spanish exploration in the Gulf of Mexico (1508–28), Spanish speculation on and exploration of the South Sea (1502–39), and Nuño de Guzmán’s conquest of Nueva Galicia (1530–31).

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, 3-volume set: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez

History

Pautz, Patrick Charles

Americas

University Of Nebraska Press

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s account of the doomed Narváez expedition to the vast unexplored lands beyond the northern frontier of New Spain has long been heralded as the quintessential tale of the European confronting the wilderness of North America and its native inhabitants for the first time. After living captive among native peoples of the present-day Texas coast for almost six years, Cabeza de Vaca traveled overland through present-day western Texas and northern Mexico until being reunited with his countrymen near the Pacific coast. His account offers an isolated glimpse of areas of Gulf coastal Texas and northeastern Mexico that would not be visited again by Europeans for over 150 years and is the earliest authentic eyewitness description of the North American bison. Volume 1 presents the first modern edition of Cabeza de Vaca’s original 1542 relación and a new, annotated, facing-page English translation. It concludes with a newly researched study of Cabeza de Vaca’s life.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Vol. 1 (Volume 1)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s account of the doomed Narváez expedition to the vast unexplored lands beyond the northern frontier of New Spain has long been heralded as the quintessential tale of the European confronting the wilderness of North America and its native inhabitants for the first time. After living captive among native peoples of the present-day Texas coast for almost six years, Cabeza de Vaca traveled overland through present-day western Texas and northern Mexico until being reunited with his countrymen near the Pacific coast. His account offers an isolated glimpse of areas of Gulf coastal Texas and northeastern Mexico that would not be visited again by Europeans for over 150 years and is the earliest authentic eyewitness description of the North American bison. Volume 2 analyzes the narrative in discrete segments, putting into context Cabeza de Vaca’s descriptions of the landscape, ecology, and peoples he encountered. It also includes new research into the preparations of Narváez’s expedition in Spain and a fresh study of the lives and fates of Cabeza de Vaca’s three surviving companions.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Vol. 2

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Adorno, Rolena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Adorno, Rolena

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Adorno, Rolena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Colonial Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Guaman Poma : Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru: Second Edition (ILAS Special Publication)

Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Latin American Monographs / Institute of Latin American Studies, No. 86)

Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru (Latin American Monograph)

The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative

The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative

Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, 3-volume set: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Vol. 1 (Volume 1)

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Vol. 2