No abstract

For its value as a historical source and as a singular piece of writing, Antonio Pigafetta’s account of the Magellan-Elcano expedition has appeared in diverse places, and over the centuries. Numerous scholars have worked to establish the history and nature of those editions and translations. This study pursues three objectives related to Pigafetta’s account: to articulate a synthesis of the publication history; to summarize the development of research on that transmission; and to identify trends, controversies and possible gaps in that scholarship.

This article examines the ‘Taboas geraes da toda a navegacão’ (1630), a manuscript atlas by Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz I (fl.1602-1649), as a textual artifact permanently altered and resignified by the additions and alterations that Spanish mariner and author Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera (c.1646-c.1705) carried out in the late seventeenth century. I examine the biographical circumstances in which Seyxas possessed the atlas and analyze his modifications of the ‘Taboas geraes’ as authorial acts with political, autobiographical and literary dimensions. I seek, as well, to identify problems that the ‘Taboas geraes’ presents for how we understand matters of authorship and textual nature surrounding this object – as well as other one-of-a-kind, mediated artefacts – examining whether existing scholarship provides an adequate framework through which to approach this situation.

This article examines a collection of approximately 30 print and manuscript works on piracy that Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera cites in Piratas y contrabandistas de ambas Indias , a Spanish history of piracy completed in 1693, first published in 2011. These texts, largely Northern European in origin, are today unknown, having either evaded the bibliographic record or never existed. The author examines how Seyxas employs these sources, locates Piratas y contrabandistas within the larger textual production arising from overseas travel in the seventeenth century, and considers what Seyxas’ bibliography can potentially offer scholars of the Early Modern maritime world.

No abstract