The ‘Taboas geraes’ of João Teixeira Albernaz I as a Mediated Textual Object

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the ‘Taboas geraes da toda a navegacão’ (1630), a manuscript atlas by Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz I (fl.1602-1649), as a textual artifact permanently altered and resignified by the additions and alterations that Spanish mariner and author Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera (c.1646-c.1705) carried out in the late seventeenth century. I examine the biographical circumstances in which Seyxas possessed the atlas and analyze his modifications of the ‘Taboas geraes’ as authorial acts with political, autobiographical and literary dimensions. I seek, as well, to identify problems that the ‘Taboas geraes’ presents for how we understand matters of authorship and textual nature surrounding this object – as well as other one-of-a-kind, mediated artefacts – examining whether existing scholarship provides an adequate framework through which to approach this situation.