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Foundation and Greatnesses of the very noble, and very loyal City of the Kings of Lima …, by Rodrigo de Valdés S.J.
The complete title of the work of Rodrigo de Valdés is
Fundacion y Grandezas de la muy noble, y muy leal Civdad de los Reyes de Lima, insigne corte, Cabeza Tres vezes Coro- nada del Perv, Rico Lucido esmalte de la Corona de España, que ciñe, al Circulo Eterno de dos Mundos, nuestro Augusto Invicto Monarca, tres vezes Grande Emperador de las Indias: Celebradas a Coros de vna, y otra lengua, en Quartetas heroycas de verso Hispano-Latino
This poem is a fundamental study of the Peruvian colonial culture for several reasons: on the one hand, it represents a hybrid text in two levels: the linguistic and the literary. Fundación y grandezas (Foundation and greatnesses) show as the title says a mixed language between Latin and Spanish, the two languages of the Hispanic empire. On the other hand, the text is the result of a combination of classical and modern genres: epic, chorography, chronicle and gloss coexist in a single document. Besides, this late work of Valdés constitutes a very valuable document because at the same time that it describes the city of Lima, as a space and as a community, it exhibits the prevailing Creole position in the seventeenth century. The political affirmation of this community is evident in the verses of the Jesuit. This ideological position determines a different version of the history of the conquest, whose main characters acquire a mythological touch, whether military like Francisco Pizarro or spiritual as Santa Rosa de Lima.
The 1687 printed text brings a biography of the author who is, perhaps, the best source on himself. Following the criteria of Elio Vélez, we use the title of the interior cover, instead of the main cover that, according to the researcher, is a choice of the editors of the posthumous volume.