The fall of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottomans and, on the other side of the world, the fall of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco (present-day Mexico City) by the Spanish conquistadors and their indigenous allies in 1521 are two of the events that mark the beginnings of early modernity.

Apart from their temporal proximity, these events are connected by similar narratives about ominous signs that foretold them; and, at the time of these significant events, some Greeks and some Mexicans respectively captured the traumatic experience of conquest in poems and songs.

The book examines, from a comparative perspective, three lamenting poetic narratives: on the one hand, the Lament of Constantinople, and on the other hand, the Song of Huexotzinco and the Song of Tlaxcala, also tracing the fortunes of these texts to the present day. It is essentially a study that deals with how collective memory and cultural trauma are linguistically produced, how the experience of the conquered is captured, how the trauma perpetuates, and how, ultimately, it is connected to the formation of national identity.