Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: travel and change (Naufragios)

The book known nowadays as Naufragios by Álvar Núez Cabeza de Vaca is one of the most important testimonies about the discovery and conquest of the New World. The first half of the 16th century saw many exploration and conquest travels in which thousands of sailors, explorers, conquerors and soldiers had to face the reality of the just discovered continent. It is really interesting to see how those who wrote about this event experienced it. Naufragios has always been read as a source of historical and anthropological information, but it has been also studied for the literature elements which we can find in it. In my thesis, I tried to look at the work in its complexity: see the literature influences in it and find those elements that we could call literature elements, but also I wanted to focus on the unusual experience of the author and look into the testimony of his experience with the American reality and see how this experience changed him. My thesis begins with a historical introduction which I consider very important to situate the work in its context. I tried to explain the events which led to the discovery of the New World and also the reaction of the Old World to the discovered one. After this general introduction my work continues with analysis of the first literature that treated the reality of..