Latin Epic from Mexico

The Latin epics produced in colonial Mexico contain a wealth of exciting material, and only one, Rafael Landívar’s Rusticatio Mexicana, has ever been translated into English. The course will introduce this remarkable tradition of writing which began in the 1500s, before focusing on two striking examples from the early eighteenth century: José de Villerías y Roelas’ Guadalupe (1724), a narrative of the celebrated apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531, a decade after the Spanish conquest; and (ii) José Mariano de Iturriaga’s Californiad (1740), an account of the visions and divine prompting that led the Jesuit missionary Salvatierra to seek to convert the indigenous inhabitants of Baja California. This is a 1000 level Latin class: some familiarity with Virgil and experience of reading the Aeneid will be a helpful prerequisite.