A New World Arcadia: Learning, Literature, and Mannerism in the Pastoral Fiction of New Spain

In the first half of the seventeenth century, Mexico witnessed the authorship of the only three pastoral novels of the colonial Americas. After Bernardo de Balbuena’s novel, Siglo de oro en las selvas de Erífile (Golden Age in the Forest of Erífile) came into print in Spain (1608), Francisco Bramón wrote what may be the first novel published in the Americas: Los sirgueros de la Virgen sin original pecado (The Goldfinches of the Virgin without Original Sin) (1620). Decades later, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza contributed his own interpretation of the genre, El Pastor de Nochebuena (The Christmas Eve Shepherd) (1644). This talk will address the role of pastoral fiction in the portrayal of New Spain as an innovative intellectual community in dialogue with its European cultural inheritance.

Teresa Clifton (Brown University), J.M. Stuart Fellow