Description
Book SynopsisTraditional Petrarchan and Neoplatonic paradigms of love started to show clear signs of inadequacy and exhaustion in the sixteenth century. How did the Spanish Golden Age recast worn out discourses of love and make them compelling again? This volume explores how Spanish letters recognized that old love paradigms, especially the crisis of the subject, presented an extraordinary opportunity for revising traditional literary strictures. As a result, during Spain’s nascent modernity, literature took up the challenge to expand existing forms of desire and subjectivity.
A range of scholars show how canonical and non-canonical Golden Age writers like Miguel de Cervantes, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, and Francisco de la Torre y Sevil became equal agents of the sweeping ontological reconfiguration of the idea of eros that defined their culture. Such reconfiguration includes: the troubling displacement of self and other se
Trade Review
"In looking back on Cervantine cultural criticism, we find that there is an unspoken invitation to consider how our current generation of Cervantistas will be evaluated by scholars later in the twenty-first century. In the meantime, we can appreciate the creative and innovative approaches in Goodbye Eros, knowing that these erudite essays will surely inspire similarly provocative work in the future." -- Sherry Velasco * Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 43, No. 4 *
"The chapters gathered in Goodbye Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes contribute a fresh approach to the critical dialogue as they highlight still contested issues pertaining to race, religion, politics, ethics, and sexuality, and further illustrate Cervantes’ universal and timeless relevance." -- Kátia Sherman, Hillsdale College * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *
Table of Contents
Introduction: Eros in the Age of Cervantes Ana Maria Laguna, Rutgers University and John Beusterien, Texas Tech University Part I. Amorous Optics: Reframing Perception, Gender Subjectivity, and Genre Convention 1. Egocentricity versus Persuasion: Eros, Logos, and Pathos in Cervantes’s Marcela and Grisóstomo Episode Joan Cammarata, Manhattan College and Ana Maria Laguna, Rutgers University 2. The Deceived Gaze: Visual Fantasy, Art, and Feminine Adultery in Cervantes’s Reading of Ariosto Mercedes Alcalá Galán, University of Wisconsin-Madison Part II. Reasoning the Unreasonable: Towards a Rationale of Love 3. El Greco and Cervantes’s Euclidean Theologies Eric Clifford Graf, Francisco Marroquin University 4. Love and the Laws of Literature: The Ethics and Poetics of Affect in Cervantes’s "The Little Gypsy Girl" Eli Cohen, Swarthmore College 5. Eros and Ethos in the Political and Religious Logos of The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda: The Anomic Character in Cervantes Jesús Maestro, University of Oviedo Part III: Kissing between the Lines: Blurring Sexual and Racial Norms 6. Sexy Beasts: Women and their Lapdogs in Baroque Satirical Verse Adrienne Martin, University of California, Santa Cruz 7. Sexual Deviance and Morisco Marginality in Cervantes’s The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda Christina Lee, Princeton University 8. The Black Madonna Icon: Race, Rape, and the Virgin of Montserrat in The Confession with the Devil by Francisco de Torre y Sevil John Beusterien, Texas Tech University Part IV: Recasting Erotic and Heroic Molds 9. For Love of the White Sea: The Curious Identity of Uludj Ali Diana de Armas Wilson, University of Denver 10. Writing a Tragic Image: Eros and Eris in Lope de Vega’s Jerusalem Conquered Jason McCloskey, Bucknell University 11. The Un-Romantic Approach to Don Quixote: Cervantine Love in the Spanish, Post-War Age Ana Maria Laguna, Rutgers University Notes List of Contributors
