This book contains three separate but related parts: a 126-page interpretation of selections from Oviedo’s General and Natural History by Kathleen Ann Myers, 34 pages of translations by Nina M. Scott of the relevant chapters, and 81 pages of image reproductions. The translations and images provide the primary source material upon which Myers builds each of her five analytic chapters, thus allowing readers to follow her arguments more closely and to consider the evidence for themselves.
Myers sheds important new light upon Oviedo’s place in early sixteenth-century Spanish literature. His prolific writing career spanned several decades and included books on military history, heraldry, a three-volume genealogy of the Castilian monarchy, and several other works of both fiction and nonfiction. But he devoted the greatest time and effort to his 2,000-page Natural History, which underwent continual revision over at least 20 years. Oviedo’s final version remains difficult to read since...
