Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World

Abstract

Book Review| March 01 2020 Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World. By Martínez, Miguel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 320 pp. Stephen Rupp Stephen Rupp Stephen Rupp teaches Spanish and comparative literature at the University of Toronto. His current project centers on Cervantes and the canonical genres of Virgilian poetry. His most recent book is Heroic Forms: Cervantes and the Literature of War (2014). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Modern Language Quarterly (2020) 81 (1): 125–127. https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-7933115 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Stephen Rupp; Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World. Modern Language Quarterly 1 March 2020; 81 (1): 125–127. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-7933115 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsModern Language Quarterly Search Advanced Search Latin American literature can trace its origins to narratives of exploration and conquest. Prominent within this body of early colonial writing is a learned epic on Spain’s protracted campaigns to subdue the native people of the Arauco region of Chile, Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana, initially published in three parts (1569–90) and widely distributed across the Hispanic world. Anchored in the canonical models of Latin epic, Ercilla’s poem attempts to construct a narrative of foundational martial conflicts for Spain’s overseas empire. Various aspects of this poem nonetheless mark its departures from an epic account of heroic origins in a distant past. Ercilla writes as a combatant, a direct participant in the conflict that he recounts; he praises the integrity and heroism of the indigenous warriors in defending their homeland; he stresses the challenges to imperial authority and military force that Spanish... Copyright © 2020 by University of Washington2020 You do not currently have access to this content.