Historias de cautiverio y de comedia: Las crónicas de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca y Hans Staden a partir de una lectura de El entenado de Juan José Saer

My thesis addresses humor, comedy, and irony and how they can be read within 16th century European chronicles of captivity, specifically Naufragios by Cabeza de Vaca (1542) and Hans Staden: The True History of His Captivity (1557). I argue that by re-reading Saer’s novel, El entenado (1983), which tells the experience of a cabin boy’s 10 years in captivity with the Colastiné, one can recognize the comedic nature of the interchanges between captive European explorers and their indigenous captors within the chronicles that likely inspired Saer’s work. I examine this humor in the chroniclers’ vivid and grotesque descriptions of customs, which include cannibalism and orgy, and the prevalence of laughter and theatricality present in the overly-descriptive interaction with the other. This interchange oftentimes leads to self-mockery or ridicule from the perspective of an external narrator (Saer and often Cabeza de Vaca) or the external position of the reader (Staden).