Misfortunes and Shipwrecks in the Seas of the Indies, Islands, and Mainland of the Ocean Sea (1513?1548): Book Fifty of the General and Natural History of the Indies

ISBN: 0813035406

Author: Fern

Condition: New

"Brings alive the culturally rich prose of Spains first royal eyewitness historian, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Misfortunes and Shipwrecks offers English-speaking readers a fascinating glimpse into the complex, often disastrous, Spanish Imperial expansion into the Americas."--Kathleen Ann Myers, Indiana University"A hidden value of the text is in finding slavery, servitude, and mixed company around the edges of an otherwise masculine European story."--Kris Lane, College of William & Mary"A masterful translation of one of the most entertaining and vibrant chapters of Oviedos chronicle."--J. Michael Francis, University of North FloridaThese dramatic tales of seafaring and shipwrecks have been translated into English for the first time from Oviedos sixteenth-century reports on the perils and disasters experienced by travelers to and from the New World. These narratives contain important information about colonial navigation, meteorology, geography, shipping, trade routes, and sociology.Oviedos goal in writing about these events was not only to share these captivating stories with others but also "so that men may know the many perils that accompany sea travel."Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) was a historian and author of the monumental fifty-book General and Natural History of the Indies,the single most important sixteenth-century source on the early Spanish presence in the New World. Glen F. Dille, emeritus professor of Spanish literature at Bradley University, is the author of Antonio Enríquez Gómez, and the translator and editor of one previous volume of Oviedos work, Writing from the Edge of the World.