Abstract

This paper aims to be an initial approach to the way in which Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo puts up an specific discourse in his work at the time of describing the American city. Concretely, I have been interested in analyzing the ways the first chronicler of the American Indies adapts long-time used formulas from the old continent when he is introducing the reader to the new reality constituted by the American city. That is the case of Santo Domingo, a city to which Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo was especially bounded. It will serve us as an example to study how the chronicler adapts the formula of the panegyric of the city to the New World.

Abstract

From the 15th century on, the practitioners of the mechanical arts obtain a new self-confidence and do no longer want to be regarded merely as manual workers. In this context, they frequently underline the mathematical basis of their discipline in order to increase its value from the status of a mechanical to that of a liberal art. In the Spanish golden age period, the military art, amongst others, is conceived as a mathematical discipline. A particularly curious case is the Libro de las grandezas de la espada (1600) whose author, Luis Pacheco de Narváez (1570-1640), propagates the art of swordsmanship, which he names «the true skill», as a science based on the disciplines of the quadrivium. The present article outlines the arguments applied by Pacheco in a preliminary chapter in order to prove the mathematical and scientific status of his discipline.

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the text entitled Llanto sagrado de la América Meridional written by the Augustinian friar Francisco Romero. The work presents a kind of spiritual mapping of american land. Therefore, the text divides the territory of the continent according to their proximity or remoteness from the true faith. Our main objective will be to examine the rhetorical mechanisms that lie behind this description of the Indian space.