Hallazgo de un manuscrito inédito del poema 'El Nuevo Mundo' (1701) de Francisco Botelho de Moraes e Vasconcelos: descripción y estudio del ms. 0648 de la biblioteca de la Abadía de Montserrat"

Abstract El Nuevo Mundo (1701) is an epic poem written by the Portuguese poet Francisco Botelho de Moraes e Vasconcelos (1670–1747), which narrates the voyage of Christopher Columbus to America. In the context of the 18th-century epic revival of Columbus, El Nuevo Mundo is a remarkable exemplar of the splendour of Iberian epic poetry, comparable to works such as Os Lusiadas and La Araucana . However, El Nuevo Mundo has received limited scholarly attention and lacks a critical edition. This article presents the only known manuscript of the poem. The document, found in the library of Montserrat (Barcelona), comprises book VI in its entirety, with 200 unpublished octaves that are absent from the first printed edition of the poem, published by Gabriel Bro and Juan Pablo Martí in Barcelona in 1701. Drawing upon this recent discovery, this article presents a description of the manuscript and an analysis of its content, highlighting the discrepancies with the printed version . The conclusion of the article puts forwards that these unpublished stanzas contain biographical aspects of the author's life and finally discusses some additional questions in order to lay the foundations for future research on this neglected epic poem.