Francis Drake en la narrativa del argentino Vicente Fidel López

Abstract

This paper is part of a larger research work on Hispanic American narrative that focuses on pirates in the Caribbean Sea as its core argument. This literary corpus, composed mainly of historical novels from the 19th century, not only extolled the figure of the pirate to romantic dimensions, but also transformed him into a symbol from which the narrators of a rising Hispanic America projected their ideal of a Nation. The purpose of the present essay is two-fold: on the one hand it aims to examine the mechanisms by which the Argentinean Vicente Fidel Lopez exalts the character of corsair Francis Drake in his book The Heretic’s Bride (1855), converting him into a synecdoche of England; then the most advanced model of civilization compared to the image of a corrupted and decaying colonial Spain. On the other hand, it proposes a new reading of Lopez’s novel that reevaluates its literary quality by considering the context in which it was written, and by linking certain piratical historical events with their fictitious recreations.