Tag Archives: Cabeza de Vaca

Cabeza de Vaca on the Big Screen and in Books

I thought there had to be a film version of Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative–and sure enough, there is.  I had difficulty locating an English-language trailer, but I think you can pretty much follow the action here.  In my thorough research … Continue reading

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Not So “Self-Reflexive about the Problem of Remembering”

I think that one of the most important of Smith and Watson’s concepts that applies to Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative of his travels in the Americas is memory. Some classmates have made the argument that his entire autobiographical account is … Continue reading

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Cabeza de Vaca? Or Cabeza de Mentiras?

When reading the first part of The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, the concept of Authenticity as found in Smith and Watson’s text, strikes some curiosity in the reader.  This specific aspect of autobiographies focuses on who tells the story … Continue reading

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The Trauma of A Lifetime

Upon recognizing some elements of tragedy within the exploration narrative, one may consider an abstract concept that further supplements the reality of Cabeza de Vaca’s expedition.  Due to the number of casualties within the group of explorers, it is suspected … Continue reading

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Cabeza de Vaca’s Constructed Autobiographical Truth

It’s interesting to read Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion because it is seemingly a straight forward account, almost to the point of being akin to a captain’s log, of his experiences in the New World.  At the time of its publication, … Continue reading

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Cabeza de Vaca’s Conscious Forgetting

As Smith and Watson discuss in the Reading Autobiography, the narratorial strategies which self-writers employ often “attend to the role of remembering–and conscious forgetting–in the act of making meaning out of the past and the present” (30). As de Vaca … Continue reading

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The Identity of Cabeza de Vaca

While Cabeza’s autobiography centers around his travels, turmoils, and exploration of the new world, he clearly forms his own identity throughout the narrative.  Cabeza’s identity is especially important, as one of his goals as an explorer, colonizer, and writer is … Continue reading

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Cabeza de Vaca: Tragedy and the Other in the Contact Era

Cabeza de Vaca was a sixteenth century Spanish Conquistador that explored the New World during the Narvaez expedition that set sail in 1527. His narrative details this failed expedition and the decade in which he experienced shipwreck, survival in the … Continue reading

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Shared Experience

Smith and Watson’s ideas of Experience are quite influential in relation to Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative. It is important to consider how Cabeza de Vaca’s account relies heavily on personal experience in the exploration of foreign worlds. In class we … Continue reading

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The Ideological I – How a Changing Cabeza Changes God

In Reading Autobiography, Smith and Watson discuss the “Ideological I” in a way that illuminates the competition between Cabeza de Vaca’s religious/social/political beliefs and his diminishing likelihood of survival in the first ten chapters of his narrative. Smith and Watson … Continue reading

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