An approach to Spanish and Amerindian words in Richard Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations (1589) and their reception in early English lexicography

Abstract

Richard Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations (1589) was a landmark in the history of English travel literature (Hadfield 2007: 98). This work culminated a period of intense editorial production on the expeditions to America by Spanish and English navigators, which had begun in 1555 with Richard Eden’s English translation of Peter Martyr of Angleria’s De orbe novo decades (Hadfield 2007: 71-72). Hakluyt's work served a dual purpose: on the one hand, it compiled and glorified the naval deeds and expeditions undertaken by the English throughout the world, but especially in America (Sacks 2006: 31); and, on the other hand, it provided information about the geography of the new territories, the native customs, the Spanish population of the new settlements, the location of gold mines, and the plants, animals and commodities abounding in the newfound lands (Sacks 2006: 33). Since Hakluyt's main aim was publishing a work that would promote new expeditions to America (Elliott 2006: 26-27), he had to convince his readers of the benefits these new lands could bring to Britain. The best way to do this was through a discourse that conveyed truth and authenticity both in the reality described and in the language used to describe it (Scammell 2000; Pollack 2014: 6); hence, Hakluyt’s incorporated a great number of Spanish and Amerindian terms that designated the new American reality (Kiddle 1952; Algeo 1996; Arbelo-Galván & Rodríguez-Álvarez 2002-2003; Rodríguez-Álvarez 2010). But, what kind of terms were most likely to be introduced? And, given that these were unfamiliar words to English audiences, is there any kind of strategy used to explain the meaning of the new words? And finally, were they ever incorporated into the first dictionaries that were beginning to be published in England? This paper will tackle these questions by setting the following objectives: (i) to compile an inventory of the Spanish and Amerindian terms that have been incorporated into the English text; (ii) to classify these terms according to the lexical fields they refer to; (iii) to analyse how the meaning of these new words is explained to English readers, unfamiliar with these languages; and (iv) to study the reception of these terms in the incipient monolingual and bilingual lexicography of the English language. In order to carry out the analysis of the texts, we have used the metasearchable digital collections Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO); as for the lexicographical research, we have resorted to the online database Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME) as well as to the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). The results will disclose a higher number of words form Spanish designating different aspects of colonial life and a group of Amerindian words mainly related to natural elements.