Moctezuma and Spaniards: An Incident from a Sixteenth–Century “Rimed Chronicle”

Abstract

The general history of man has not infrequently been supplemented by materials found in epic poetry (The Iliad, The Aeneid, La Chanson de Roland, Os Lusiadas, etc.). The history of Spanish America has similarly profited, from epic poems such as Castellanos' Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias, Ercilla's La Araucana, Oña's Arauco domado. Most scholars who have commented on Antonio de Saavedra Guzmán's El Peregrino indiano, published in 1599, have emphasized this poem's historical value. Such emphasis perhaps compensates somewhat for their having found scant literary merit in it (A mere “rimed chronicle” is the dictum of Menéndez y Pelayo, dean of Spanish literary historians).