Christopher Columbus's "Letter to the Sovereigns": announcing the discovery / Margarita Zamora -- "Fierce and Unnatural Cruelty": Cortes and the conquest of Mexico / Inga Clendinnen -- The negotiation of fear in Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios / Rolena Adorno -- Ius et Factum: text and experience in the writings of Bartolome de Las Casas / Anthony Pagden -- Demons, imagination, and the Incas / Sabine MacCormack -- The philosopher's breviary: Jean de Lery in the enlightenment / Frank Lestringant -- The aesthetics of conquest: Aztec poetry before and after Cortes / David Damrosch -- Dancing and the sacred in the Andes: from the Taqui-Oncoy to Rasu-Niti / Sara Castro-Klaren -- The work of gender in the discourse of discovery / Lois Montrose -- Ralegh's fugitive gold: reference and deferral in The Discoverie of Guiana / Mary C. Fuller -- Voices of resistance: the epic curse and Camoes's Adamastor / David Quint -- Elizabethan tobacco / Jeffrey Knapp -- Epilogue: Michel de Certeau's heterology and the new world / Luce Giard -- Travel narratives of the French to Brazil: sixteenth to eighteenth centuries / Michel De Certeau.