Among concubines, widows, and married women. The Romance of Luis de Miranda and the construction of a River Plate imaginary

Abstract

Luis de Miranda, member of Pedro de Mendoza's fleet, wrote, probably around 1540, a composition in verse that is now known as Elegy Romance or simply Romance. Ricardo Rojas considered the poem to be the first literary composition of the Rio de la Plata in the early twentieth century. Since then, critics have read the Romance exclusively as a literary text. This paper proposes to read it taking into account its documentary context: the letter that Miranda himself sent to the King in 1545 and the Relación that Francisco Ortiz de Vergara sent to the Council of the Indies, at the end of which the Romance is copied. This reading, without excluding the literary dimension of the text, allows us to consider it integrating a discursive constellation whose purpose is eminently political.