Rodríguez Freyle

A son of a Spanish conquistador and a Spanish woman, Juan Rodríguez Freyle (Bogotá, 1566 – 1642?) wrote his crónica between 1636 and 1638, presenting it as a history of the Kingdom of New Granada. However, there is a gulf between the work’s formal chapter titles and its content. In fact, more than half of its pages are bawdy short stories. My first thesis is that the author incorporates these stories into his crónica as a cautionary tale. The second thesis is that El carnero’s hostility toward women goes hand in hand with an essentialist discourse about them. These two theses are interrelated, as the cautionary tale serves to alert readers to the innate wickedness of women and the necessity of controlling them.