Geographies and the Strait of Magellan in the early 17th century

Para nuestro público de Norteamérica, les dejamos aquí esta información sobre una charla que impartirá Paul Firbas (Stony Brook University) el próximo día 14 de abril a las 19.30 en el Colby College (Maine, USA). Les recordamos que tendremos el honor de contar con el profesor Paul Firbas en nuestro seminario el día 30 de abril.

This talk explores Spanish, English and Dutch narratives, engravings and maps on the Strait of Magellan, and its peoples and animals, and the rhetoric of the empire between 1579 and 1621. Although the region of the Southern Strait was first mapped and narrated in the 1520s during the Spanish expedition led by Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, it took many decades until this remote area of the world acquired a stable representation in Western cartographies. This paper will, thus, explore the years in which European empires competed for the material and symbolic control of the Magellan region. Right after the Dutch discovery of the Cape of Horn in 1616, the Spanish crown sent an expedition under captains Bartolomé García de Nodal and Gonzalo de Nodal, who published in 1621 their Account of the Voyage of Discovery of the New Strait of Saint Vincent and Recognition of the [Strait] of Magellan. The talk will be an attempt to contextualize, analyze and interpret this overlooked text.