Tradición y originalidad en la cultura humanística de indias. géneros, paratextos y traducciones en el mundo atlántico (siglos xvi-xvii)

We propose a new study on the chronicles of Spanish Indies that we have worked for more than a decade (Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
Toribio Motolinía, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Bernabé Cobo), to which we incorporate a list of other authors (Jerónimo de Mendieta,
Bernabé Cobo, Gregorio García, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Juan de Palafox, Juan Meléndez, among the most outstanding). We do
this from the philological analysis of texts and the circumstances in which they developed their work, representative of the Latin American
culture of the XVI-XVII centuries. We emphasize his contributions to the "Latin American library" from different disciplinary approaches (in
the research and work teams collaborating Hispanists, specialists in English, French and Portuguese philology, historians, musicologists,
and art historians), but we focus our analysis on the genesis of texts and ideas (originality) in relation to the cultural background (tradition)
or with the literary relations maintained with their peers. We study the intercalations of genres, intertextual strategies, or plot appropriations
that appear in the work of these authors, in some cases improperly labeled as plagiarists or falsifiers. On the contrary, we analyze
internally the works in their autonomous value, but we also detect the importance of the paratextual elements (prologues, presentations,
censors, dedications, news, indexes) to establish the relationships devised between authors, original texts, adaptations, and translations.
They served to obtain and offer recognition in a game of identities and hierarchies necessary in a culture developed in environments close
to the viceregal courts or the creole elites. The concepts of quotation, intertextuality, adaptation, or reception are the backbone of research
based on the large corpus of materials accumulated in our successive research projects. What is important is that our work, in addition to
systematically applying this approach to the circulation of texts and information in the heart of American colonial culture, will expand the
panorama, including novel texts and authors of literature in Portuguese, for a side, and translations into the western languages of the
chronicles of the Indies, on the other. In the first case, as an initial step in a research in progress, the common Hispanic and Lusitanian
elements will be addressed in the formation of an "Iberian school" related to the problems of political and social legitimacy of the Latin
American world. In particular, the prototype construction of subaltern subjects of the viceregal world: the native, the black (free or slave),
the mestizos or the women (in their different ethnicities and social status) will be used. The authors selected are Serafim de Freitas,
Antonio de Sâo Domingos, Pedro Simôes, Fernão Rebelo, Manuel de Nóbrega, and António Vieira; who are confronted with the Hispano-
American scholastics. We propose not only an approximation to the form, but above all to the contents. Chronicles and selected texts,
which make them multipurpose documents in their interest for different disciplines, especially in the areas of social, political, religious and
scientific thinking. In the case of translations, their systematic study is the objective, especially of the paratextual elements, such as
presentations, adaptations, or literary and ideological adaptations.