Early Visions and Representations of America: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios and William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation

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When the Europeans first arrived in America, they had a number of preconceptions, prejudices, expectations and hopes about what life in the New World would be like. This book examines the different visions and representations of America conveyed in the writings of Spanish conquistador lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca and the Pilgrim leader William Bradford, taking both writers within their respective literary and historical contexts. Anthologies of American literature have consistently ignored Spanish-language achievements on the grounds of a restrictive interpretation of American literature based on linguistic boundaries. Consequently, Spanish-language texts such as Cabeza de Vaca's or the account by the Hidalgo de Elvas, to name but two examples, have been marginalized in the narrative of American literary history. In seeking to redress this neglect, Galisteo contributes to scholarship which seeks to analyze Early America as a whole, including not only Anglo American perspectives but also the Spanish American aspect of the colonization process.

Reviews

A revealing book detailing the similarities and differences between Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios and Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation. A must read for those interested in colonial history and literature of the United States. * Jos B. Fernndez, Dean of the College of Arts & Humanities and Professor of History and Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida, USA, and author of The Account: lvar Nez Cabeza de Vacas Relacin *
This is an important, engagingly written, and long needed book. It corrects selectively Anglo-centric accounts of the foundations of North American culture, and provides a fascinating comparison of the mentalities of a Pilgrim Father and a would-be Conquistador. * Derek Hughes, Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen, UK *
The author has chosen an unusual comparison of North American narrative: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vacas Naufragios and William Bradfords Of Plymouth Plantation. Although the focus is on these two accounts, the author does an excellent job of placing both works in the context of other accounts composed at approximately the same time []There already exists a historical debate on eyewitness testimonials about the Americas, and it will be interesting to see how this argument will be received. -- Patricia Seed, University of California-Irvine * Journal of American Studies *
This book intrigues from the start. The varying ways in which early European explorers and colonizers have viewed and portrayed what was to them a New World have fascinated scholars and general readers ever since Columbus wrote his first reports In this book, Carmen Gmez Galisteos main focus is on the cultural contexts of two early sources, one Spanish and one English, and on the different historiographical values placed on them by their contemporaries and by later scholars. Her overall aim is to offer a comparative case study of two very different but equally compelling first-hand narratives of early North America. -- Sylvia L. Hinton, Universidad Complutense de Madrid * Miscelnea: A Journal of English and American Studies *

Author Bio

M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo teaches English at UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia), Madrid, Spain. She has published in a number of journals, including Ad Americam, Contemporary Legend, Clepsydra, and RAEI. She is the author of The Wind is Never Gone: Sequels, Parodies and Rewritings of Gone With the Wind (2011).