The Representation of the Island of Cyprus and its Conversion into a Hostile Space in "Relacion de la guerra de Cipre y sucesso de la batalla naual de Lepanto" (1572) by Fernando de Herrera

Abstract

Fernando de Herrera wrote and published his Relación in 1572, after having passed less than one year since don Juan de Austria had achieved the famous victory of Lepanto against the Ottoman fleet of galleys, on 7th October 1571. Herrera´s account, at once historical and fictitious, due to its author ´s propagandistic and subjective impetus, promotes a correspondent view on the island of Cyprus, initially seen from the perspective of its fame as “the most blissful” of the Mediterranean and “consecrated to Venus”, and subsequently represented as a hostile space, because of the fall of Famagusta under the Turkish power. The current paper aims at reflecting upon those elements that, reunited, sum up to such conversion of the representation of the island and its inhabitants, as it is being portrayed in the Herrerian account.