ABSTRACT
Prefatory matter, which includes epistles dedicatory, prefaces, addresses to readers and patrons and commendatory verse, is a genre and thus includes a code of expectations. Oviedo, Thevet, and Hakluyt all tried to define the national project of colonization and gave to it a collection or an attempted assimilation of an archive for public consumption. In Renaissance fashion, Oviedo, Thevet, and Hakluyt are men of action in the civic space and not monastic scholars living out a discipline in isolation. By looking at their dedications and prefatory materials, the chapter ascertains what strategies and moves, tropes and schemes they use and to what ends. Oviedo, Thevet, and Hakluyt wanted official or quasi-official roles in moulding and recording policy in America. The chapter shows the rhetorical means and motives that these texts yield in their intricate and ambivalent relation internally and to their reader, whether it is the patron addressed or the general reader.
