The defeat of the Ottomans by the Holy League fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571) was among the most celebrated international events of the sixteenth century. This volume anthologizes the work of twenty-two poets from diverse social and geographical backgrounds who composed Latin poetry, often modeled on Vergil and other Roman poets, in response to the news of the battle, the largest Mediterranean naval encounter since antiquity. Among the poems included is the two-book Austrias Carmen "by the remarkable Juan Latino, a black African former slave who became a professor of Latin in Granada. The poems, including two previously unpublished, are here translated into English for the first time, along with fresh editions of the Latin texts.

Don BartolomE de Alva was a mestizo who rose within New Spain's ecclesiastical hierarchy when people of indigenous heritage were routinely excluded from the priesthood. In 1640 and 1641 he translated several theatrical pieces from Spanish into Nahuatl, yet this prodigious accomplishment remained virtually unknown for centuries.Nahuatl Theater, Volume 3 presents for the first time in English the complete dramatic works of Alva, the only known plays from Spain's Golden Age adapted into the lively world of Nahuatl-language theater. Alva's translations-"The Great Theater of the World," "The Animal Prophet and the Fortunate Patricide," "The Mother of the Best," and a farcical intermezzo-represent ambitious attempts to add complex, Baroque dramatic pieces by such literary giants as Lope de Vega and Pedro CalderOn de la Barca to the repertory of Nahuatl theater, otherwise dominated by sober one-act religious plays grounded in medieval tradition. The Spanish sources and Alva's Nahuatl, set on facing pages with their English translations, show how Alva "Mexicanized" the plays by incorporating Nahuatl linguistic conventions and referencing local symbolism and social life. In their introductory essays, the editors offer contextual and interpretive information that provides an entrEe into this rich material. As the only known adaptations of these theatrical works into a Native American language, these plays stand as fine literature in their own right.