Producing the Pacific offers the reader an interdisciplinary reading of the maps, narratives and rituals related to the three Spanish voyages to the South Pacific that took place between 1567 and 1606. These journeys were led by Alvaro de Mendana, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Isabel Barreto, the first woman ever to become admiral of and command a fleet. Mercedes Maroto Camino presents a cultural analysis of these journeys and takes issue with some established notions about the value of the past and the way it is always rewritten from the perspective of the present. She highlights the...

Practising Places offers an original insight into the culture of early modern Spain in so far as the various fields explored here are seldom juxtaposed. Literary texts, urban views and paintings are analysed side by side in a hybrid cultural interpretation that is as cartographic as it is architectural, historical or literary. This book presents a "thick" description which focuses on the first picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes, the autobiographical writing of Teresa of Avila, and the urban views of Spanish towns drafted or painted by Joris Hoefnagel, Anton Van den Wyngaerde and El Greco....