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Read|looked at from very diverse, even conflicting, theoretical and critical perspectives throughout the years, Blake’s are a special case of complex multiform works, invented and executed at that specific “historical period in which he found himself, a period from whose vantage point Blake could assess the consequences of the Newtonian world scheme and the systems which had made it possible.” (Donald Ault, Visionary Physics: Blake’s Response to Newton, 1974, 45). As “the original form of the Newtonian perspective” (Ault, 41), Urizen emerges from the six illuminated books – America, Europe, The Song of Los, The First Book of Urizen, The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania (1793-1795) – “which have every appearance of having been intended to form a more or less co-ordinated project of poetic inquiry into the origins of man, religion and the development of political, sexual and social systems.” (The Urizen Books, ed. David Worrall, 1995, 9). First, does this very beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century constitute a particularly prolific historical vantage point from which to read|look at Blake’s complex multiform works again, and to interact with the previous very diverse, sometimes even conflicting, practices of reading|looking at them? Secondly, given the fact that Blake’s verbo-visual creations were inextricably invented and executed by him as draughtsman, poet, engraver and painter, and as a Londoner working between the 1780s and the 1820s, is it imperative to read|look at his poetic inquiry into the development of social, political, religious, scientific and artistic systems in technico-historical terms?

This collection of essays brings together a wide range of Spanish and Portuguese academics and writers exploring the ways in which our encounters with literatures in English inform our assumptions about texts and identities (or texts as identities) and the way we read them. Mapping, examining, reading and re-reading, fashioning and self-fashioning and, especially, weaving appear as appropriate images that convey the complexity and the nature of creative writing. Such a metaphor has been fundamental for the history of world literature since the Roman poet Ovid had included a tale in his Metamorphoses in which weaving, narration, uncertain identities, and the risks of telling uncomfortable truths all figure prominently. As such, these essays trace the intertwined patterns that knit texts together, weaving identities as well as undoing them and, in the process, interrogating established and official truths.

Introduction. This article analyzes the argumentative techniques used in the three main texts narrating the first circumnavigations of the world. On the one hand, the Spanish expedition of Magallanes-Elcano (1519-1521), told by Antonio Pigafetta in Relación del primer viaje alrededor del mundo; on the other hand, the English journey by Francis Drake (1577-1580), described in “The Famous Voyage of Sir Francis Drake” and The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake. Methodology and results. The comparative analysis of these texts concludes that in the height of the century of the discoveries these narrators used similar discoursive techniques to give an account of the newly found places to their respective Monarchs and also to the public opinion of the time., Introducción. El propósito de este trabajo es analizar los mecanismos argumentativos y apelativos de los tres textos principales que narran las primeras cicunnavegaciones al mundo. Por un lado, la española de Magallanes-Elcano (1519-1521), descrita por Antonio Pigafetta en la Relación del primer viaje alrededor del mundo y, por otro, la inglesa de Francis Drake (1577-1580), descrita en “The Famous Voyage of Sir Francis Drake” y The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake. Metodología y resultados. El análisis comparativo de los textos anteriores revela que en pleno siglo de los descubrimientos ambos países buscaron similares formas discursivas a la hora de dar cuenta a la Corona y comunicar al mundo los nuevos lugares descubiertos.