Article/section’s main juice
-
Historical framework (section header)
o
Colonies under the decadence of the last
Hapsburgs: Philip III, Philip IV, and Charles II.
o
Loss of American possessions.
-
Cultural tendencies (section header)
o
From the Renaissance to the Baroque.
o
Literary plenitude.
-
Two significant literary geniuses during the
century, both born in America and on opposite ends of the spectrum: the
Renaissance prose writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and the baroque poetess,
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (88)
-
No true novels written in New World. This is not
so surprising, considering that novels didn’t really even have esteem in Old
World (Spain) during the time period. They weren’t really appreciated until
nineteenth century. (116)
-
The chronicles continue in the 17th
century, but there is a change – the chroniclers are not amazed at the newness
of things. Also new theme – problems with Dutch/English pirates (124)
-
Theatre was more of a Spain thing than a New
World thing
Comps writers discussed
-
Góngora (pg. 86)
-
Quevedo (pg. 86)
-
Bernardo de Balbuena (pg. 89-91)
-
Carlos
de Sigüenza y Góngora (pg. 94-95)
-
Sor
Juana Inés de la Cruz (pg. 95-105)
o
Los empeños de una casa (pg. 103-105)
-
Juan
del Valle Caviedes (pg. 109-110)
General notes (pulp and juice)
Introduction
-
Seventeenth century – both Cervantes and Lope de
Vega are getting down in Spain so yay for that (85)
-
Baroque style appears – manifestation of the
Spanish national crisis
o
Spain turns its back on the more exciting
culture of the rest of Europe (85)
o
Bitterness, anguish, resentment,
disillusionment, fear, pessimism – yet simultaneously, also national pride (85)
o
Resignation to being out of step with the rest
of the world, yet a desire to attract the world’s attention and wonder by the
use of language of great affectation (85)
o
Góngora and Quevedo (86)
o
Great
poetic theatre in Spain (ex: Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca) (86)
The Baroque Comes to America
-
Spanish colonies received all the seventeenth
century Spanish literature (86)
-
Spaniards in New World had great appreciation
for Spanish literature of Edad media (think Amadís,
Conde Lucanor, Celestina) and also of 16th and 17th centuries
(87)
-
Colonies were even more religiously conservative
than mainland Spain (87-88)
o
The rest of Europe enters into an experimental independent
thinking type mindset, while Spain stubbornly remains rooted in tradition
-
Some Creoles (Sigüenza, Góngora, Sor Juana)
broke a bit free of the Spanish conservative scene to poke around at other
European literature, but had to play like they were totally following Spain’s
lead (88)
-
Baroque trends: progressive and retrogressive
movements, conflicts between the beliefs of the Middle Ages and new facts,
insecurity, fear, daring and timidity, illusion and deceit, impulse to action
and a withdrawing into the soul, a lust for life and an obsession with death,
dryness of style and astonishing florescence of ornamentation (88)
-
Two extremities of the period: Renaissance and
baroque (88)
-
Two significant
literary geniuses during the century, both born in America and on opposite ends
of the spectrum: the Renaissance prose writer, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and
the baroque poetess, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (88)
Mainly Poetry
-
Many chroniclers wrote in prose, but slid
poetry/verse in along the side – in the margins, or theatre written in verse
(89)
Bernardo de Balbuena (Spain-Mexico, 1561/1562-1627)
-
He lived during the same years as Góngora, and
had a somewhat similar poetic/writing style (89)
-
Baroque fascination with language (90)
-
Origins
as a humble village priest (90)
-
Grandeza Mexicana
o
Dedicates it to a woman – wants to please this
woman and also the powerful people in Mexico (90)
o
He has humble origins – he starts to praise the
city in which he would like to occupy a better position [ulterior motive] (90)
o
Description of the city in the baroque manner
(90)
o
Idea of the image of Mexico as more of a garden
than a forest (90)
o
Not a humble/simplistic vision, but rather a
view of “grandeur” and of “court luxury” – the exterior aspect of the Mexican
reality (90)
o
Lots of embellishments in his writing; elegant
language (90-91)
o
Clarity of construction – a Renaissance trait
(91)
§
Hendecasyllabic tercets with quatrains at the
end of each part
§
Follows Italian tradition of poems of chivalry
-
He tends towards description rather than
narration (91)
-
He is attracted by “the unreal, the contrived,
the artful” (91)
Gongorism in Mexico
(pg. 91-94)
-
Góngora had more influence in Mexico than in any
other area of Hispanic America, starting around 1600 (91)
-
Many “Mexican Gongorists” throughout seventeenth
century (92)
-
Baroque deceptions (92)
-
Several wacky styles of “poetry” – riddles,
feats of letter combinations, reversible poems, etc. (92)
-
Poetry had a really strong presence in the
baroque era (93)
-
Hispanic-Americans imitated or composed centos for numerous poetry contests
celebrated on holidays – poets read each other’s poems and wrote for one
another (93)
o
These poetry contests are a big deal.
-
Popular elements/symbols are contrived, rather
than spontaneous (93)
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (México, 1645-1700)
-
Triunfo
parténico – Description and collection of the poetry competitions of 1682
and 1683 (94)
-
He was an obedient Catholic but had some
intellectual curiosity (94)
-
Libra astronómica
y filosófica – implies a will to investigate new truths instead of leaning
on the erudition of authorized truths (94)
-
He wrote on some unliterary themes (94)
-
He stays away from poetic trend generally,
incorporating random poetic lines and not really excelling in the poetic field
(94)
-
More of a chronicler of minor events (94)
o
Prose of these chronicles was conversational
-
Infortunios
de Alonso Ramírez
o
A chronicle, but with vivid movement of a novel
(95)
o
“By writing about the adventures of others in
the first person, the author gained the freedom to dramatize scenes objectively
selected” (95)
o
“not a novel, but a travel book, written with
the purpose of recording real episodes and giving information about natural and
human geography” (95)
o
Alonso Ramírez
§
Creole with the spirit of a Spanish conquistador
§
Born in Puerto Rico in 1662
§
Sunk in the political decadence of Spain
§
Was captured by the English “heretical pirates”
and underwent terrible humiliations while in captivity for ~2 years
o
Sigüenza refers to the heresies of France and
England, in comparison with the strongly Catholic spirit of Spain (95)
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (México, 1648-1696)
-
Because of the cultural decline of the Spanish-speaking
peoples, it is very surprising to see the rising strength of Sor Juana (95)
-
Sor Juana was the voice of the Baroque period in
Hispanic-America (95)
-
The entire Mexican court and Church was convinced
of Sor Juana’s genius – Church even became alarmed at her fame (96)
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“Crisis of a Sermon” – Carta athenogórica, 1690
o
Sor Juana wrote a letter several years after a
sermon by the Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Vieyra, commenting (negatively) on
the content of the sermon (96)
o
The Bishop of Puebla published the letter
(without Sor Juana’s permission), deeming it a “letter worthy of the wisdom of
Athena” (96)
o
The Bishop then sent the published copy and a to
Sor Juana, signing as “Filotea de la Cruz” – in this letter he “advised Sor
Juana to select subjects more carefully, to read the Gospel more, and to employ
her talents on religious matters” (96)
-
Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, 1691 (96-98)
o
“one of the most admirable autobiographical
essays in the Spanish language” (96)
o
Sor Juana discusses “her early desire for
learning; her insatiable intellectual curiosity; the disadvantages of being a
woman; and her efforts to free herself of the impertinences, prejudices,
incomprehension, and stupidities with which people trammel their betters” (96)
o
Use of rhetoric – affected modesty, false
humility (96)
o
Imbert presents the
main points of Sor Juana’s letter – it is a good review if you need it. I didn’t
want to write it all up, since it’s basically review. (pg. 96-98)
-
Idea of Sor Juana’s intellectual restlessness
and liberty, which stems (at least in part) from the tone of the period (99)
-
Conflict between her feminine nature and yearning
for masculine authority (99)
-
Primero
sueño (99-101)
o
Not on
comps list, thank goodness!
o
“She Gongorizes, but her Gongorisms are
superficial” (100)
o
Poem is intensely baroque (100)
-
Many poetic themes based not on her own
experiences but on what she has learned in the lives of others (101)
-
Sor Juana is famous for her lyric verse,
especially the amorous type (101)
-
Romantic poetry similar to courtly style (101)
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Sor Juana emulated the baroque poets of the
seventeenth century (102)
-
“Her theatre, sacred and profane, was baroque
and swung in Calderón’s orbit” (102)
-
El divino
narciso, 1698 (102-103)
o
Not on
list
-
Los empeños de una casa (The Obligations
of a Home), 1683
o
“A cloak-and-sword comedy” (103)
o
Deceptions, misunderstandings, darkness,
concealments, disguises, cloaked figures (103)
o
Action lasts a few hours and takes place in
Toledo (103)
o
Even the characters are confused; they don’t
know whether they dream or are awake and do not understand what is happening
around them (103)
o
“Don
Pedro loves Dona Leonor, but Dona Leonor loves Don Carlos. Don Juan loves Dona
Ana, but Dona Ana loves Don Carlos. At the end, the only happy couple
are the sincere lovers – the good Don Carlos and the discreet and beautiful
Dona Leonor, in whom Sor Juana seems to have portrayed herself” (104)
o
Reference to Spanish literature – says that the
plays of Spain are always better (104)
o
One Mexican character – the comic servant, Castaño
(104)
o
Important scene – servant Castaño, disguised as
a woman, suddenly directs himself to the audience and consults the women on
intimate items of apparel --- this involves deception/disguise, and breaks the
character-audience/fiction-reality barriers (104)
Other Baroque poets in
South America
-
Lots of people not on the list… we don’t care
about them. Poor neglected non-canon poets! (105-109)
-
Juan
de Espinosa Medrano (107-108)
o
Mestizo
o
It has been presumed (without foundation) that
he might have written Ollantay, “the
drama with Spanish structure and Quechua language and whose origin is still in
dispute” (108)
Satire
-
Juan del Valle Caviedes is the most important of
the satirists of this time period (109)
Juan del Valle Caviedes (Spain-Peru, 1652?-1697?)
-
Very important
satirist (109)
-
Attacked doctors of the New World (Peru) for
their “ignorance, vices, and false prestige” (109)
-
“In his later years, he acquired a mature,
reflective attitude, and he wrote sonnets and other compositions with religious
emotion and in a tone of repentance and melancholy” (109)
-
Has both satiric and religious/lyrical poetry
(110)
Heroic and Religious Epics
-
Religious Spaniards of New World (especially
bishops, it would seem) had a rough time with pirates in the 17th
century (110)
o
Ex: Balbuena had to flee before the incursions
of Dutch pirates while he was still bishop of Puerto Rico – in 1625
-
Talks about lots of people who are not on the
list. (110-115)
Mainly Prose:
Novelistic Sketches
-
No pure narrative literature in the New World during
years of the conquest (115)
-
There was lots of control over publishing in New
World – both by royal monarchs and the Church (115)
-
Church tried to keep fiction/novels out of colonies,
but some Spanish ones did get in (115-116)
-
No true novels written
in New World. This is not so surprising, considering that novels didn’t really
even have esteem in Old World (Spain) during the time period. They weren’t
really appreciated until nineteenth century. (116)
-
Cervantes created the beginnings of the modern
novel with Don Quixote, yet after
that the novel declined rapidly and really didn’t have much success until 19th
century (116)
-
In the 17th century, taste for
fantasy found satisfaction not in the novel, but in the theatre (116)
-
In Mexico the first “novels” were pastoral (117)
o
Ex: Los sirgueros de la Virgen sin original
pecado, Francisco Bramón in 1620 – not
on list (117-118)
-
More people not on list… (118-124)
o
Including
Catalina de Erauso (120-121) – hmm!
Chronicles, Treatises, and Didactic Books
-
First chronicles of the conquest were not literature,
but we were able to read them with the attitude of the reader of literature
(124)
-
The chronicles
continue in the 17th century, but there is a change – the chroniclers
are not amazed at the newness of things (124)
-
New narrative theme in the 17th
century – the struggles with the Dutch and English pirates (124)
-
More people not on list. (125-130)
Theatre
-
Some writers who were born in Hispanic America
went to Spain and became established there (130)
-
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón – not on the list (130-132)
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Spain is the center of all theatrical activity –
Lope de Vega, Tirso, Calderón (132)
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Creoles seldom write for the theatre – idea that
they are intimidated by the famous Spanish playwrights (133)
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From 1681 onward, the Spanish theatre declines
while the colonies begin to advance their theatre with ambitious plays (133)
-
Mexican authors who ventured to write a play
generally only ever wrote one (133)
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