Seafaring activity for trade and travel was dominant throughout the Spanish Empire, and in the worldview and imagination of its inhabitants, the specter of shipwreck loomed large. Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World probes this preoccupation by examining portrayals of nautical disasters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature and culture. The essays collected here showcase shipwreck’s symbolic deployment to question colonial expansion and transoceanic trade; to critique the Christian enterprise overseas; to signal the collapse of dominant social order; and to relay moral messages and represent socio-political debates. The contributors find examples in poetry, theater, narrative fiction, and other print artifacts, and approach the topic variously through the lens of historical, literary, and cultural studies. Ultimately demonstrating how shipwrecks both shaped and destabilized perceptions of the Spanish Empire worldwide, this analytically rich volume is the first in Hispanic studies to investigate the darker side of mercantile and imperial expansion through maritime disaster.

CARRIE L. RUIZ is an associate professor of Spanish at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. She is the co-editor of Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies, has published work in several edited collections, including Baroque Projections: Images and Texts in Dialogue with the Early Modern Hispanic Worlds, and in journals such as Letras Peninsulares, Neophilologus, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Western Humanities Review.
 
ELENA RODRÍGUEZ-GURIDI is an associate professor of Spanish at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. She has published several book chapters and articles in various journals, including Hispanic Review, Neophilologus, and eHumanista. She is the author of Exégesis del “error”: Una reinterpretación de la praxis de escritura en Libro de la vida, Novelas ejemplares y Desengaños amorosos.
 

— Luis Avilés, author of Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los Siglos de Oro

“Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World offers a fresh view of an old process that goes back to the beginnings of civilization, making a new analysis of events that usually fall under the scope of economy or personal tragedy, as shipwrecks are.”
 — New West Indian Guide

— Elizabeth Davis, author of Myth and Identity in the Epic of Imperial Spain

“Given present-day interests in media archaeology, ecocriticism, and new materialisms, Shipwreck in the Early Modern Hispanic World offers an especially generative topic for study.”— Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures

— Raúl Marrero-Fente, author of Epic, Empire, and Community in the Atlantic World: Silvestre de Balboa’s Espejo de pacienc