La The Second Letter of Relation by Hernán Cortés in Literary Studies: A Reflection on the Archive

Abstract

Assigning literary value to colonial texts such as the Second Letter of the conquistador Hernán Cortés remains a challenge in the academic field today. In this paper, I first offer a theoretical-critical overview, outlining the framework that allows such documents to be read from a perspective that departs from classical historicism and is, instead, aligned with that of colonial literary studies, which has experienced a revival since the late twentieth century. At the same time, I explore how the Cortesian archive, marked by the tension between scarcity and abundance, begins to define its literary character early on, thanks mainly to the printed versions of the Second Letter, namely the editions of 1522 (Seville, ed. Jacobo Cromberger) and 1524 (Nuremberg, ed. Fridericum Peypus), which ensure, on the one hand, the transformation of the relation into a narrative and, on the other, the wide circulation and literary prominence of the image of the city of Tenochtitlan.