The Design of Part One of La Araucana: Doña Mencía and the Fall of Concepción

Abstract

This article underscores the importance of Canto 7 in the design of Part One as well as its significance in the overall architecture of Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana (1569, 1578, 1589). During his depiction of Concepción's destruction, Ercilla collapses the dichotomies established in the poem's opening cantos between the masculine and the feminine, between the Spanish and the Araucanians, and between the conqueror and the invaded. The poet invites the reader to reconsider both Doña Mencía as well as Concepción's fall from overlapping, often contradictory, perspectives. Ercilla rewrites the scene on two occasions in Part One and once again in Part Two. Concepción's destruction can therefore be seen as a prototype repeated throughout La Araucana that endows the epic with greater unity and that suggests unexpected parallels through the juxtaposition of otherwise distant or unrelated episodes. The multiple reversals in Canto 7 correspond to an overarching inversion in the fortunes of warfare in Part One.