Biography

Sarissa Carneiro is a Professor of Literature at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research examines the transposition of Classical and Renaissance models into Colonial Latin American literature, with particular emphasis on rhetorical codifications, poetic-visual relations, and affective structures, especially in epic poetry. Her monograph Retórica del infortunio: Persuasión, deleite y ejemplaridad en el siglo XVI (2015) analyzes rhetorical systems in narratives of shipwrecks and misfortunes. She has published extensively on Pedro de Oña, including an annotated edition of Temblor de Lima (2018) and the scholarly volume Poesía y censura (2022). Her forthcoming book, Ninfas del Nuevo Mundo: Raptos, cornucopias, profecías, aims to investigate the figure of the nymph in both poetic and figurative representations of the New World.

Project Summary

This project examines the impact of Italian Humanism on the literary culture of the Viceroyalty of Peru, framing it within the broader reception of classical antiquity in the New World. It focuses on authors whose works aimed to “translate” the humanist tradition in Colonial America, with particular emphasis on elevating Christian epic to a classical status. The project investigates the influence of Italian models and how these works were transformed as they adapted to a new, culturally heterogeneous geographical and historical context, negotiating the tensions between local and transnational dynamics, including religious conflicts. It aims to demonstrate that the poets of the Academia Antártica emulated works such as Battista Mantovano’s Parthenice Mariana (1481), Macario Muzio’s De Triumpho Christi (1499), Jacopo Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis (1526), and Marco Girolamo Vida’s Christias (1535), believing that their own poetic endeavors in America would revive efforts parallel to those of their Italian predecessors.