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Sixteenth-Century Reading in the Indies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

José Torre Revello
José Torre Revello*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Extract

Among the many books destined for children, the one preferred in America during the colonial period was the Fables attributed to the Phrygian slave, Aesop. Translated into Spanish, it was found in the hands of travelers and colonists throughout the Spanish empire. The simplicity of the tales and the morals which they point out made them the delight not only of children but also of adults, who explained the precepts with purposeful wit.

Aesop was one of the authors most read in the New World, according to what we can deduce by consulting the numerous lists of books which were sent to various parts of the American continent. His fables were also circulated in Latin and Greek, surely for pedagogical purposes. In Spain there was no lack of poets who devoted part of their work to fables, such as the Archpriest of Hita with his Enxiemplos, up to the culmination in the eighteenth century with Félix María Samaniego and Tomás de Iriarte, whose works it is logical to suppose were brought to the New World with many others of various kinds. By that time the shores of America were being swept by other ideas, distinct from those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which brought unrest to the minds of the people, ideas foreign to the calm and well-being of the two previous centuries.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , October 1957 , pp. 175 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1957

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References

1 Because of its unusualness, we note the following item which is included in a shipment of books sent to New Spain in 1600: “Ocho resmas de catones y alejos y otros libros pequeños para muchachos de diferentes historias.” Revello, José Torre, El libro, la imprenta, y el periodismo en América durante la dominación española (Buenos Aires [Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Publicaciones del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, número LXXIV], 1940), p. lxxx.Google Scholar

2 Medina, José Toribio, La imprenta en México (Santiago de Chile, 1912)Google Scholar, I, Introduction. The original document is in the AGI (Archivo General de Indias), Seville, Sección V, Audiencia de México, legajo 68.

3 Torre Revello, op. cit., pp. 100 ff.

4 They were also reprinted in Toledo, Medina del Campo, and Madrid in the sixteenth century.

5 [Castillo, Francisco Fernandez del] Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI (México [Publicaciones del Archivo General de la Nación, VI], 1914), pp. 272–273.Google Scholar

6 Leonard, Irving A., Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Indies (Berkeley, California, 1933), pp. 49, 60, 64.Google Scholar

7 AGI, Sección III, Contratación, legajo 1082; Torre Revello, El libro, p. xxx.

8 Revello, José Torre, “Lo que nos revela una lista de libros enviados a América en 1586,” Revista del Ateneo [Jerez de la Frontera], 1932, año IX, números 60–62.Google Scholar

9 AGI, Sección III, Contratación, legajos 1087, 1106.

10 Leonard, , Romances of Chivalry, p. 74 Google Scholar; Revello, Torre, El libro, p. lxiii.Google Scholar

11 Leonard, Irving A., Los libros del conquistador (México-Buenos Aires, 1953), pp. 311, 318 Google Scholar. On the circulation of Aesop’s Fables, both in Spanish and in Latin, in New Spain during the seventeenth century, see O’Gorman, Edmundo, “Bibliotecas y librerías coloniales (1585–1694), Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (México, 1939)Google Scholar, t. X. On page 808 the following edition is cited: “Antonio de Arce, Fábulas de Hisopo, en romance. En Sevilla, por Juan de Osuna, año de 1652.”

12 It was included in a shipment of books bound for Mexico in 1586, according to Leonard, Romances of Chivalry, p. 55. The shipment included one copy bound in parchment, appraised at seven reals. A bill of the merchant Francisco de Butrón to Luis de Padilla, dated Lima, 1591, lists two copies of Boiardo’s work. Leonard, Irving A., “On the Lima Book Trade, 1591,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XXXIII (November, 1953), p. 523.Google Scholar

13 It is listed on ships which went to New Spain in 1576, 1580, 1585, and 1599; [Fernandez del Castillo] Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI, pp. 372, 386, 387, 416, 441; on the Santa Marta going to New Spain in 1586, bound in parchment and appraised at eight and twelve reals; Leonard, Romances, pp. 53–55. See also, Leonard, “On the Lima Book Trade,” and Torre Revello, “Lo que nos revela una lista de libros.”

14 Leonard, , “On the Lima Book Trade,” p. 552.Google Scholar

15 A copy in the Tuscan dialect was sent in 1578 on the Nuestra Señora de la Victoria to San Juan de Ulúa; [Fernandez del Castillo] Libros y libreros, p. 379 (ver: p. 440). Two copies of Los Triunfos were sent to Tierra Firme in 1586; Torre Revello, “Lo que nos revela una lista de libros.” See also, Torre Revello, El libro, p. xliv, which gives an entry from the list of books sent on the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, a part of the 1599 fleet to Tierra Firme under the command of General Sancho Pardo: case two contained Los Triunfos of Petrarch, priced at three reals. Petrarch’s work was translated into Spanish for the first time by Antonio de Obregón, Seville, 1532; a new version was published by Hernando de Hozes at Medina del Campo in 1554. A brief of Gregory XIII, dated Rome, August 27, 1573, ordered that “Los Triumphos de Petrarca, impreso en Sevilla, año de 1532, con el comento de Obregón” should be withdrawn; [Fernandez del Castillo] Libros y libreros, p. 246. Finally, four copies of Los Triunfos were shipped to Tierra Firme in 1586 and two copies of Sonetos y Canciones to the same destination in 1601; Leonard, Romances, pp. 59, 91.

16 La Arcadia of Sannazaro appeared on the register of many shipments. See Revello, Torre, “Lo que nos revela una lista de libros” for 1586, and El libro, pp. 227 and xlv Google Scholar, for 1594.

17 See the shipments of 1591, 1596, 1597, and 1598, ibid., pp. 227, lxii; Leonard, Romances, pp. 64, 71, and “On the Lima Book Trade,” p. 521. The translation is reproduced in M. Menendez y Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, IV, 278–459. Cf. Sosa, Aurelio Miro Quesada y, El Inca Garcilaso (Madrid, 1948), pp. 107–120.Google Scholar

18 In the shipment of books sent to Mexico in 1584 by Benito Boyer, a citizen of Medina del Campo, for case number seven fourteen copies are listed of the work of Aldo Manuzio, Eleganze insieme con la copia della lengua toscana e latina, Venice, 1558; one copy in case nineteen, and six in case thirty-seven. [Fernandez del Castillo] Libros y libreros, pp. 267, 272, 279. Ten copies were listed in the 1596 shipment of Diego Ruíz Sigura; Leonard, Romances, p. 64.

19 A copy in Tuscan of Il Cortegiano was listed on the Misericordia, bound for San Juan de Ulúa in 1582; [Fernandez del Castillo], Libros y libreros, p. 170. Castiglione’s work was translated into Spanish by Juan Boscán.

20 In a shipment to New Spain in 1600 were listed Tuscan editions of Filocopo and Laberinto de amor. Torre Revello, El libro, p. lxxxii.

21 Among other books, the works of Cardinal Bembo in Italian were on board the Santa Ana in 1577 and the San Antón in 1579, bound for New Spain. [Fernandez del Castillo], Libros y libreros, pp. 376, 380. The Cardinal’s poetry was translated into Spanish by Fray Luis de León.

22 In 1576 and 1577 ships bound for New Spain carried works by Paulo Jovio. Most widely circulated of his works in America was his Elogios o vidas breves, de los cavalleros antiguos y modernos illustres en valor de guerra, que estan al vivo pintados en el Museo de Paulo louio y traduxolo del latín en castellano, el licenciado Gaspar de Baeca, Granada, 1568. It seems that this work is mentioned in the shipment of 1577. Ibid., pp. 372, 376. Leonard, Romances, p. 106, gives the entry “Vn paulo Houio” in a shipment in 1601. See the preliminary study of Manuel Ballesteros Garibois in Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, El Antijovio (Bogotá, 1952).

23 A shipment of books made by Luis de Padilla, a citizen of Seville, to New Spain in 1600 showed two entries on the list: “El Dante, poeta, comentado, En ytaliano, Cinco r[eale]s” and “El Dante en ytaliano. En dos r[eale]s.” Leonard, Los libros del conquistador, pp. 304, 309.

24 Among the unedited documents can be cited the notice of the shipment of six copies of La vida de Lazarillo sent in 1588 by Andrés de Zamora to Juan del Campo in Nombre de Dios, and twenty-five copies which were shipped in 1589 to Tierra Firme on the Salvadora. AGI, Seville, Sección III, Contratación, legajo 1087. See also, the shipments of 1576, 1583, and 1606 to Mexico and Lima in Leonard, Los libros, pp. 285, 292, 336, 338; and the shipments to Santo Domingo in 1597 and to Tierra Firme in 1601 in Leonard, Romances, pp. 74, 77, 80, 83.

25 Shipments made between 1601 and 1692 are listed in Leonard, Romances, pp. 83, 84; Leonard, Los libros, p. 356; and Torre Revello, El libro, pp. cxxxvii-xclviii.

26 On the shipment of Espinel’s work in 1669, see Torre Revello, op. cit., p. cxxxi, and Leonard, Irving, “On the Mexican Book Trade, 1683,” Hispanic American Historical Review, XXVII (1947)’, 422.Google Scholar

27 Carilla, Emilio, “La novela picaresca española,” Universidad, XXX (Santa Fe, 1955), 321.Google Scholar