In La Araucana Alonso de Ercilla undertakes a renovatio of classical epic, spurred on by personal participation in the events he describes.
Drawing on the same storehouse of classical imagery, but impelled by reformed religion, Spenser sets out in The Faerie Queene on a transformatio of the heroic poem, raising the stakes from the potential for shame and dishonour in the ancient, epic world to the possibility of damnation in the modern, Protestant one.
The present study explores the insights offered by the juxtaposition of these two masterworks in the social and literary praxis of the early modern transatlantic world, from the Irish archipelago to the Southern Cone of the Americas.
