Quevedo and the grotesque / J. Iffland.-v.2

Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645), one of the greatest poets of the Spanish Golden Age, was the master of the baroque style known as “conceptismo,” a complex form of expression fueled by elaborate conceits and constant wordplay as well as ethical and philosophical concerns. Although scattered translations of his works have appeared in English, there is currently no comprehensive collection available that samples each of the genres in which Quevedo excelled—metaphysical and moral poetry, grave elegies and moving epitaphs, amorous sonnets and melancholic psalms, playful romances and profane burlesques. In this book, Christopher Johnson gathers together a generous selection of forty-six poems—in bilingual Spanish-English format on facing pages—that highlights the range of Quevedo’s technical expertise and themes. Johnson’s ingenious solutions to rendering the difficult seventeenth-century Spanish into poetic English will be invaluable to students and scholars of European history, literature, and translation, as well as poetry lovers wishing to reacquaint themselves with an old master.

This book explores the Spanish elite’s fixation on social and racial ‘passing’ and ‘passers’, as represented in a wide range of texts. It examines literary and non-literary works produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that express the dominant Spaniards’ anxiety that socially mobile lowborns, Conversos (converted Jews), and Moriscos (converted Muslims) could impersonate and pass for ‘pure’ Christians like themselves. Ultimately, this book argues that while conspicuous sociocultural and ethnic difference was certainly perturbing and unsettling, in some ways it was not as threatening to the dominant Spanish identity as the potential discovery of the arbitrariness that separated them from the undesirables of society – and therefore the recognition of fundamental sameness. This fascinating and accessible work will appeal to students of Hispanic studies, European history, cultural studies, Spanish literature and Spanish history.

Francisco de Quevedo (Madrid, 1580-1645) was well known for his rich and dynamic style, achieved through an ingenious and complex manipulation of language. Yet he was also a consistent and systematic thinker, with moral philosophy, broadly understood, lying at the core of his numerous and varied works. Quevedo lived in an age of transition, with the Humanist tradition on the wane, and his writing expresses the characteristic uncertainty of a moment of cultural transition. In this book Alfonso Rey surveys Quevedo's ideas in such diverse fields as ethics, politics, religion and literature, ideas which hitherto have received little attention. New information is also provided towards a reconstruction of the cultural evolution of Europe in the years prior to the Enlightenment, and thus the scope of the book extends beyond that of Spanish literature.

This study of the poetry of Francisco de Quevedo combines a stylistic analysis with a philosophical interpretation in the broad sense.

Grotesque and Caricature: Leonardo to Bernini examines these two genres across Renaissance and Early Modern Italy. Although their origins stem from Antiquity, it were Leonardo da Vinci’s early teste caricate that injected fresh life into the tradition, greatly inspiring generations of artists. Critical among them were his Milanese followers, such as Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, and also Michelangelo and Sebastiano del Piombo as well as, notably, Annibale Carracci, Guercino, and Bernini among others. Their artistic production—drawings, prints, paintings, and sculpture—reveals deep interest in physical, physiognomic, and psychological observations with a penchant for humour and wit. Written by an international group of established and emerging scholars, this volume explores new insights to these complementary artistic genres. Contributors include: Carlo Avilio, Ilaria Bernocchi, Christophe Brouard, Sandra Cheng, Susan Klaiber, Michael W. Kwakkelstein, Tod A. Marder, Rebecca Norris, Lucia Tantardini, Nicholas J. L. Turner, Mary Vaccaro, and Matthias Wivel.

Few periods in history are so fundamentally contradictory as the Baroque, the culture flourishing from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries in Europe. When we hear the term âBaroque,â the first images that come to mind are symmetrically designed gardens in French chateaux, scenic fountains in Italian squares, and the vibrant rhythms of a harpsichord. Behind this commitment to rule, harmony, and rigid structure, however, the Baroque also embodies a deep fascination with wonder, excess, irrationality, and rebellion against order. The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque delves into this contradiction to provide a sweeping survey of the Baroque not only as a style but also as a historical, cultural, and intellectual concept. With its thirty-eight chapters edited by leading expert John D. Lyons, the Handbook explores different manifestations of Baroque culture, from theatricality in architecture and urbanism to opera and dance, from the role of water to innovations in fashion, from mechanistic philosophy and literature to the tension between religion and science. These discussions present the Baroque as a broad cultural phenomenon that arose in response to the enormous changes emerging from the sixteenth century: the division between Catholics and Protestants, the formation of nation-states and the growth of absolutist monarchies, the colonization of lands outside Europe and the mutual impact of European and non-European cultures. Technological developments such as the telescope and the microscope and even greater access to high-quality mirrors altered mankindâs view of the universe and of human identity itself. By exploring the Baroque in relation to these larger social upheavals, this Handbook reveals a fresh and surprisingly modern image of the Baroque as a powerful response to an epoch of crisis.

Satire, the use of criticism cloaked in wit, has been employed since classical times to challenge the established order of society. In colonial Spanish America during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, many writers used satire to resist Spanish-imposed social and literary forms and find an authentic Latin American voice. This study explores the work of eight satirists of the colonial period and shows how their literary innovations had a formative influence on the development of the modern Latin American novel, essay, and autobiography. The writers studied here include Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Juan del Valle y Caviedes, Cristóbal de Llerena, and Eugenio Espejo. Johnson chronicles how they used satire to challenge the "New World as Utopia" myth propagated by Spanish authorities and criticize the Catholic church for its role in fulfilling imperialistic designs. She also shows how their marginalized status as Creoles without the rights and privileges of their Spanish heritage made them effective satirists. From their writings, she asserts, emerges the first self-awareness and national consciousness of Spanish America. By linking the two great periods of Latin American literarure—the colonial writers and the modern generation—Satire in Colonial Spanish America makes an important contribution to Latin American literature and culture studies. It will also be of interest to all literary scholars who study satire.