Orphans of Adam: Columbus and Francis Drake in Juan de Castellanos's Elegías de varones ilustres

• In Event: Heroes of Epic Proportions: The Figure of the Explorer-Discoverer in Early Modern Spanish and Ibero-American Epic

Abstract

Christopher Columbus's voyages posed significant problems for the Catholic doctrine of humankind's universal descent from Adam. It nearly forestalled Columbus's proposed enterprise, and afterward, questions shifted to how descendants of Adam ever made their way to the Indies. In Juan de Castellanos's Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias (1589), Columbus champions the Indians' adamic origins to portray his voyages as reuniting distant relatives. In a later portion of the poem, Francis Drake invokes the myth of Adam to justify his piracy in Spanish America. This paper examines how Drake's use of the myth challenges Spain's colonization and highlights the hypocrisy of Columbus's professed motives. It also analyzes what Drake's reference to Adam means for how humans related to each other, to God and to the cosmos after Columbus's voyages.

Author

• Jason McCloskey, Bucknell University