Images of Cortés in sixteenth-century translations of Francisco López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México (1552)

Abstract

Abstract This study provides an overview of five sixteenth-century translations of Francisco López de Gómara’s Historia de la conquista de México (1552), namely, Agostino di Cravaliz’s and Lucio Mauro’s into Italian, Thomas Nicholls’s into English, and Martin Fumée’s and Guillaume Le Breton’s into French. The article is organized into two main sections. The first one casts some light upon the socio-historical context in which the translations were written by analysing several paratexts (e.g., acknowledgements and introductions). The second section focuses on the manner in which passages regarding Cortés’s origins and death were rendered, discussing translators’ techniques, skopos, and target audiences.