Acceso usuarios
City of Cambridge, Estados Unidos
This essay addresses the relationship between information practices, literary texts, and empire in the Early Modern period by analyzing an unusual glossary included in early editions of Alonso de Ercilla’s epic poem the Araucana (1569–1589). Existing research has focused principally on the poem itself, only considering Ercilla’s glossary, entitled the “Declaración de cosas notables,” as a supplementary repository of information, and overlooking that it serves a rhetorical function. An analysis of the relationship between the “Declaración” and the epic demonstrates that the glossary elaborates upon aspects of the poem that align with Spanish imperial goals. Acting as a guide for readers, the “Declaración” directs attention away from more ideologically ambiguous and testimonial moments in the text, augmenting instead a top-down, retrospective narration of conquest and territorial expansion. This glossary thus gestures to a symbiotic relationship between editorial strategies of information management in the metropole and eyewitness testimony in the Americas.
