Memoria original de Bernal Díaz del Castillo (Spanish Edition)

Among historians, Bernal Díaz del Castillo's Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (c.1551-c.1584) has long been recognized as a uniquely important primary source for the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Among literary scholars and even modern novelists, it has been sensed that Bernal, one of Hernán Cortés’s soldiers, broke with certain conventions of Spanish Renaissance historiography. The present book, which decisively proves that suspicion, is the first to analyze exactly in what sense, to what extent and how it happened; and to trace some of its consequences in later literary history. The book's thesis, in brief, is that Bernal, a former soldier and landowner whose beliefs were quite conventional, was forced into originality somewhat against his will, partly by his own clumsiness as a historian confronted with complex material, and partly by his own stubborn refusal to simplify.