Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World »

Diana de Armas Wilson is Professor of English and Renaissance Studies, University of Denver

Two sets of related issues prompt this study: the birth of the New World in European consciousness and the rise of the Cervantine novel in Spain. The first full-length study to move beyond an inventory of Cervantes's references to the Indies—to Mexico and Peru, cannibals and tobacco, parrots and alligators—this book interprets his novels as a transatlantic, cross-cultural, and multi-linguistic achievement.

Introduction, Novel Genres, Novel Worlds
1. The Americanist Cervantes
2. The Novel about the Novel
3. The Novel as 'Moletta': Cervantes and Defoe
4. Some Versions of Hybridity: cacao and Potosí
5. 'Scorpion Oil': The Books of Chivalry
6. Islands in the Mind: Utopography
7. Jewels in the Crown: The Colonial War Epic
8. Remembrance of Things Lost: Ethnohistory Conclusion Bibliography Index