Libraries

Lima, the most important city in South America since the beginning of the 17th century, is described in Fundación y grandezas de la muy noble y muy leal Ciudad de los Reyes through a discourse that seeks the appropriation of space and time marking continuity with the European tradition. Lima is extolled for its splendor and is designated as the new Rome, via translatio imperii, because it quickly becomes a rich and complex city, a political and commercial center of great importance and a monumental baroque city, where religious buildings take on special importance.  The Jesuit Rodrigo de Valdés describes Lima in this way, because the Creole discourse needed to construct an idea of ​​the New World as an extension of Spain, the seat of power of the greatest empire of Christianity. This construction had to be expressed in a mythical founding story that would allow the New World to be constituted as a paradigm within the system of representations established by the imperial imaginary and to consolidate a symbolic image of Lima and a Creole mythography. Thus, the poem by Father Valdés should be seen as a text centered on the foundation itself and that presents as a framework two axes that support it: Pizarro and Santa Rosa de Lima. The paradigms that sustain the empire are recognized in the two characters: the courage in the fight together with the desire to conquer and holiness. Francisco Pizarro, hero of the conquest, is presented as a centaur, viracocha and as a vehicle for the establishment of the myth of Lima as the Garden of Eden where Isabel Flores de Oliva, the Dominican tertiary, the first saint of the New World who protects the city from civil discord, pestilence and pirates, a unifying symbol of a fragmented society.

In this way, the first contemporary edition of the little-known, but no less important poem by the Jesuit Rodrigo de Valdés, written by Martina Vinatea for the philological editions of the Estudios Indianos series of the Institute of Aurisecular Studies, is presented. This poem, already published on this website, has been studied as a sample of Peruvian criollismo, leaving aside its textual problems. Vinatea has not only fixed the text, but has also added new veins for interpretive study of it.

Martina Vinatea, PhD in Hispanic Philology and PhD in History, is a Professor at the Universidad del Pacífico (Lima, Peru) and Co-Director of the Center for Indian Studies (CEI) / Indian Studies Project (PEI) of the University of Navarra and the Pacific university. Her latest works have focused on Hispanic female conventual poetry and viceregal Peru and on the works of the poets of the Antarctic Academy.

 

Reviews

Hipogrifo, Vol. 6, Núm. 2, (2018)

 

Teaching Tools

Canal del PEI: Fundación y grandezas