PHOTO: Courtesy

This book, which has just been published as issue 26 of the "Library Services Indiana" of the Centro de programs of study Indianos, presents the first critical edition of such an interesting work as the Sumario de la Natural Historia de las Indias, by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the first chronicler of the Indies. The text sample shows us the novelty that the American nature meant for the first Spanish explorers and how and with what tools they approached the rich task of describing it. This careful edition of the Sumario, prepared by Álvaro Baraibar (PhD in History from the University of Navarra and researcher of group of research Siglo de Oro, GRISO), has been based on the princeps edition of 1526, taking into account the textual transmission up to that time. The text has a detailed annotation and illustrations by Oviedo himself, and others of the same period, which accompany a work core topic in the history of culture and science of the sixteenth century. This new research by Dr. Baraibar is part of his interest in cultural history and the chronicles of the Indies, which has led him to approach in his latest works the vision of nature in various Indian texts throughout the sixteenth century.

Other recent titles in the "Library Services Indiana"

Two other volumes in the same collection have also recently appeared: issue 24, Historia de todas las cosas que han acaecido en el Reino de Chile y de los que lo han gobernado, by Alonso de Góngora Marmolejo, study, edition and notes by Miguel Donoso Rodríguez; and issue 25, Renacimiento mestizo: los 400 años de los "Comentarios reales", volume of programs of study on the famous work of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, coordinated by José Antonio Mazzotti.