This essay compares sixteenth - and early seventeenth-century Portuguese shipwreck narratives, many of which were collected and published in Bernardo Gomes de Brito's História trágico-marítima (1735-1736), with early modern Spanish accounts of shipwreck and captivity. By examining not only the common strategies and structures of shipwreck and captivity narratives, but also direct intertextual connections, it illuminates the shared literary and ideological context of the early modern Iberian empires. The comparison highlights the pleasurable as well as the didactic dimensions of these narratives for early modern writers and readers, thus challenging both nationalist interpretations and those that focus exclusively on their counter-hegemonic potential.
shipwreck narratives; captivity narratives; comparative Luso- Hispanic studies