The shipwreck accounts of the 16th century are not only fascinating documents about very extreme experiences, but they can be seen also as interesting literary documents. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the most famous Spanish castaway, was forced to spend almost ten years among different indigenous tribes. His account is a testimony of his unusual experiences and it is very interesting from the point of view of narrative techniques since he had to find the way to narrate his strange story. It is also important to compare his account with other shipwreck accounts since they share many images and motifs.
The shipwreck accounts were written mainly by survivors of catastrophic shipwrecks on overseas voyages to America and India, and therefore belong to the huge corpus of works written in the 16th century about exploring and conquering new territories. Unlike the most of the written sources of the period, these accounts do not celebrate the overseas enterprise, they bring a new, tragic perspective and describe the dangers and misery of overseas voyages. The shipwreck accounts are often seen as a specific genre and can be studied from the perspective of travel narrative as well as from the perspective of autobiographical writing. There are many common motifs and elements in these accounts such as the physical transformation of the castaway, the interpretation of the shipwreck as a punishment, and the motive of time.
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