LOUBAYSSIN DE LA MARQUE (François)

Lot 178
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Estimation :
2500 - 3000 EUR
LOUBAYSSIN DE LA MARQUE (François)
Historia tragicomica de don Henrique de Castro. Paris, widow of Matthias Guillemot, 1617. In-8, red half maroons, smooth back with the gilded title along in a frame of fillets joined at the corners, gilded edges (modern binding in the old taste). Medina, Biblioteca hispano-chilena, n°42. Very rare book: first historical novel in Spanish and first exotic novel set in South America. Original edition, decorated with a frontispiece title engraved on copper and a beautiful portrait of the author at the age of 29, unsigned but perhaps by Léonard Gaultier. François Loubayssin de La Marque, a Gascon writer of Spanish expression, was born at the end of the 16th century and was an ordinary gentleman of the court of Louis de Lorraine, Cardinal of Guise, Prince to whom he dedicated this novel. Henrique de Castro's Historia tragicomica is considered to be the first novel set in Spanish America. It is set in Chile during the Battle of Tucapel (1550s) and tells the adventures and love stories of a soldier who escapes the conquistadors' rout against the Araucan Indians (Mapuches). The themes of the conquest of Mexico and Peru are also intertwined in an extravagant way, as well as allusions to Magellan's circumnavigation (see Fresia Castillo Sanchez's article, "La originalidad de La Historica tragicomica...", 1995, pp. 109-115). Strongly influenced by Araucana, Alonso de Ercilla's epic poem published in 1569, Loubayssin's work is one of the very first novels to be published by American exoticism, following Antoine du Périer's Les Amours de Pistion (1601) - the first French novel set in the New World, precisely in Canada - and ahead of the famous Polexandre (1619-1637) of Gomberville, or the American Mercury (1678), partly located in Lima and Santa Fé de Bogota (see Gilbert Chinard, L'Amérique et le rêve exotique dans la littérature française...., pp. 59-84). The 1612 edition cited by Gallardo as the original, Ensayo de una biblioteca espanola de
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