Abstract

This article is a new interpretation of the Epistle of Amarilis to Belardo. Using a close reading of text and a detailed analysis of the text’s sources, we discover that it is more than just a complaint from one of Lope’s female admirers, finding that the letter by Amarilis, in the tradition of El Inca Garcilaso, is the Peruvian mestizo’s cry (Amarilis) for «another» homeland ­—«Spain», as symbolized by Lope.

Abstract

Epic poetry has always been considered a masculine genre. The eruption of a group identity, masculine, white, aristocratic and christian, is the result of the representation and the exclusion of the Other, fictitious and singular, but in fact composed of a variety of ethnic groups, origins, sex, genders, religions and different degrees between fiction and historicity. Indeed, in the historical epic poetry which narrated the Conquest, except for the conquistadors listed at length and the indigenous kings and caciques, only few characters are distinguished by a historical individualisation. The Other, Amerindian and female, makes a shy entrance into history, into singularity, into the (historical and christian) truth. It is the case of interpreters: Malinche and India Catalina, only historical native women that appear as part of the narrative plot as well as in the conquest enterprise in the poems of Lasso de la Vega (Cortés valeroso y Mexicana, Mexicana), of Juan de Castellanos (Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias) and of Saavedra Guzmán (El peregrino indiano).