| The Dissertation examines the impact of the discovery and the subsequent colonization of the America on the Peninsular Spanish literary prose of the XVI and XVII centuries, a topic still relatively unstudied. The analysis scrutinizes a selected corpus of prose works created in Spain by those authors who did not travel to the new continent. Whenever possible, to confirm our findings, we have quoted extensively from the many theatrical or poetic works that treat the same topics as the examples from the prose considered here.;Such depiction, as created by the intellectuals of the time, has been evaluated in order to accomplish a better understanding of its covert political and moral implications. The study uses as a critical framework Renaissance and Baroque ideologies of culture, as well as the concept of dominant ideology from Maravall's history of ideas, and the notion of "invention" of America as advanced by O'Gorman.;A study of the literary descriptions of the circumstances and the events of the various journeys provides a comprehensive view of the literary voyage to the New World. The present study also contains an analysis of the literary image of the "indiano," and its moral or social implications. The "indiano" has also been examined as a "quasi-figura" in the prose genres, and, on occasion, compared with "indianos" from the "entremes" and the "comedia".;The study includes a summary of the views of the American geography, botany, zoology, and ethnology contained in the selected prose works, and an analysis of their sources to demonstrate that the representation is neither a veridic nor a credible portrayal. We focus on the evaluation of the social causes of its most notable misconceptions.;The data suggest that the Spanish literary image of the New World contains a great deal of traditional imagery and prejudices that stem mainly from humanism, and from the philosophical and aesthetic conventions of the time, such as the stigma casted upon navigation or gold mining. |
