The reception of the "discovery", conquest and colonization of Spanish America spawned a rich imaginative literature. The case studies presented in this book represent two distinct types of imagining by two diametrically different groups: literate, and in some cases erudite Europeans, and a vanquished native nobility. The former endeavored to make sense of Spain’s (and Portugal’s) "marvellous possessions" in the New World with the limited conceptual tools at their disposal, the latter to construct a colonial identity based on their shared ancestral memory while incorporating elements from the even more wondrous Hispanic culture that had overwhelmed them.