: Bruno M. Damiani
: Studies in Honor of Elias Rivers
: Digitalia
: 9780916379322
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: CHF 45.00
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: Kunst, Literatur
: English
: 236
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Former students of the distinguished professor and scholar provide here a collection of thought-provoking studies touching on a variety of topics, from secular poetry and pastoral prose to Don Quixote and mysticism. 

"These essays, contributed by fifteen of Elias Rivers' students, are a fitting tribute to a teacher capable of awakening interests and inspiring careers."-Eric W Naylor, Hispania.
Tradition, Voice and Self in thé Love Poetry of Garcilaso (p. 24)

Inès Azar

The origin of thèse thoughts on thé poetry of Garcilaso is a question that for years seemed to me almost trivial, yet unavoidable: why do we assume, as if it were a fact, as something"given," that a single poetic voice, thé same ail throughout, speaks in ail thé poems of Garcilaso or of any other poet?

The question masked, in a sensé, thé suspicion that thé so-called unity of voice, like thé presupposed untty of literary texts, is a sometimes useful, often dangerous, fiction of criticism. Such unity allows us to trace analogies, find cohérence, draw trajectories, construct Systems.

But it may also blind us to différences, to everything that does not fit into a cohérent or systematic order. And in thé case of thé poetry of Garcilaso it may invite us to leave out ail that contradicts or breaks thé canonical unity of"his" single voice. So, I decided to begin at thé other extrême of thé familiar fictions.

The question I started with was, more or less, thé following: what happens if we read thé poems of Garcilaso without assuming any continuity or unity of voice unless it is manifest, visible and audible, in thé poems themselves? Who are thé speakers of those poems? What do they talk about?

How do they talk about it? And to whom? And on what grounds, conditions, circumstances are they thus speaking? The love poems were, almost inevitably, thé ones to start with, because they are lyrical monologues which présent thé most reduced model of speech event (énonciation), although probably also thé most difficult to interpret.

The"love poems" of Garcilaso include most of his sonnets (about thirty out of a total of thirty six) and his four Petrarchan canciones. Like ail literary texts, thé love poems of Garcilaso are fictional représentations of discourse, inscriptions of seemingly unique, seemingly"historical" acts of speech.

Each text represents a"speaking" subject, someone who says or thinks, or perhaps on occasion writes thé words that constitute thé poem. Yet, when we read thèse poems, we obviously do not enter any mind at work, or witness any act of writing or actually hear any voice. We simply read their représentation on thé printed page. In one of his"sonetos morales," Quevedo accurately depicts this apparent paradox:

Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos,

con pocos, pero doctos libros juntos,

vivo en conversacion con los difuntos,

y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos. (Soneto 131, 1-4)

Because we"listen" to them with our"eyes," and not with our ears, that is, because they are fictional, poems, literary texts are not tied to thé external circumstances, conditions and events on which ordinary discourse is grounded.

By severing discourse from its customary grounds, literary works are free to represent utterances for which we will find no appropriate occasions in thé context of our everyday life.
Index8
Preface12
Elias L. Rivers16
Tradition, Voice and Self in the Love Poetry of Garcilaso35
Visual and Verbal Modes of Representation in Peribáñez47
Heart Imagery in Santa Teresa60
Sannazzaro and Montemayor: Toward a Comparative Study of Arcadia and Diana70
Sex and the Single Hidalgo: Reflections on Eros in Don Quixote87
The Semiotics of Poetry and the Golden Age Sonnet105
Góngora's Parody of Ovide moralisé in La Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe116
A Hope for Coherence: The New Logic of Meaning in a Text by Lezama126
Of Monuments and Ashes: Some Remarks on Biographical Patterns139
The Human Body in Spanish Renaissance and Baroque Poetry: Testing Laín Entralgo's Theories148
Amarilis's Verse Epistle and Her Love for Lope: Seeing and Hearing163
A Prologue and Afterword for an Inquiry into Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter 20180
In the Labyrinth of Self: Character and Role in Calderón's La dama duende195
The Wound and the Flame: Desire and Transcendence in Quevedo and Saint John of the Cross205
Six Misogynous Sonnets Attributed to Góngora216
Epilogue227
Tabula Gratulatoria231