Bernardo de la Vega y los poetas perdidos del Nuevo Mundo

Abstract

Bernardo de la Vega, Canon of Tucuman, published at least two books of poetry in Mexico City in the early seventeenth century: La bella Cotalda y cerco de París/Relación de las grandezas del Pirú, México y los Ángeles (1601) and Ramillete de flores divinas (1605). Only a few folios of the former are extant, while the latter is now lost. This article offers new information and unpublished documents regarding the life and literary career of Bernardo de la Vega, which also shed new light on the lettered networks in New Spain over the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Vega used poetry as a means of self-promotion, describing and praising the cultural and political elites of New Spain, especially members of the cabildo and the Inquisition of Mexico. His literary works are representative of the personal ambition and social strategies shared by many writers of his time.