Built around six thematic areas that underline key processes that shaped the colonial period and its legacies - space, body, belief systems, literacies, languages, and identities - this innovative volume goes beyond the traditional European understanding of the lettered canon. It examines a range of texts including books published in Europe and the New World and manuscripts stored in repositories around the globe that represent poetry, prose, judicial proceedings, sermons, letters, grammars, and dictionaries.

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean (1492-1898) brings together interdisciplinary and comparative approaches for the study of colonialism. Using four overarching themes, the volume examines a wide array of critical issues, key texts, and figures that demonstrate the significance of Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean across national and regional traditions and historical periods.

Colonial Lives offers a rich variety of archival documents in translation which bring to life the political and economic workings of Latin American colonies during 300 years of Spanish rule, as well as the day-to-day lives of the colonies' inhabitants. Intended to complement textbooks, this reader strives to illustrate the impact of issues such as race, class, gender, sexuality, culture and religion in the daily lives of both natives and colonists alike. Includes transcripts of civil and criminal court cases, administrative reviews, ecclesiastical investigations, Inquisition trials, wills, and letters the editors, each prefaced by an introduction that places it in the social and political context of the period.

Chapter One: Writing about the Americas : from the colonial period to the nineteenth century

Chapter Two: Colonial and Viceregal Literature.