The Chilean strawberry among the English readers of Alonso de Ovalle’s Historical relation of the Kingdom of Chile

denominaciones, descripciones y traducciones en el siglo XVIII

Abstract

This article examines the description of the Chilean strawberry by the Creole Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle (Santiago, 1601-Lima, 1651) in the Histórica relación del reino de Chile (Rome, 1646), contrasting his account with other texts written by European authors during the 16th and 17th centuries. Based on a repertoire of references to Ovalle’s work in 18th-century English books, it is proposed that the forms of translation of the passage on the frutilla influenced the consideration of the fruit as an equivalent to the strawberry, a fruit familiar to Europeans at the time. It was only after the circulation of Amédée Frézier’s description, published in 1716, that the uniqueness of the Chilean variety acquired preponderance in the European understanding of the fruit, and this was reflected in the search for a term that would differentiate it from the European strawberry.