Artifice and Invention in the Spanish Golden Age

The corpus of literary works shaped by the Renaissance and the Baroque that appeared in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a transforming effect on writing throughout Europe and left a rich legacy that scholars continue to explore. For four decades after the Spanish Civil War the study of this literature flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, where many of the leading scholars in the field were based. Though this particular 'Golden Age' was followed by a decline for many years, there have recently been signs of a significant revival. The present book seeks to showcase the latest research of established and younger colleagues from Great Britain and Ireland on the Spanish Golden Age. It falls into four sections, in each of which works by particular authors are examined in detail: prose (Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Baltasar Gracian), poetry (The Count of Salinas, Luis de Gongora, Pedro Soto de Rojas), drama (Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega), and colonial writing (Bernardo Balbuena, Hernando Dominguez Camargo, Alonso de Ercilla). There are essays also on more general themes (the motif of poetry as manna; rehearsals on the Golden Age stage; proposals put to viceroys on governing Spanish Naples). The essays, taken together, offer a representative sample of current scholarship in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Stephen Boyd

Introduction Part I: Prose 1. Wind and Will in Cervantes's El celoso extremeno 2. -Desgracias anulares?: Narrative Loops in Quevedo's El Buscón 3. The Sterility of Abundance: Marcela and Grisóstomo in the Golden Age 4. Prudence and Baltasar Gracián's Oráculo manual: Baroque Political Thought and the Thomistic Dimension Part II: Poetry 5. Poesía que vive en variantes': Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino Revisited 6. Prison and Parole: On the Subject of the Selves in Góngora's Sonnet 'Prisión del nácar' 7. Fragmentos de Soto de Rojas: A 'New' Mythological Fable of the Spanish Baroque 8. Poetry as Manna in Golden Age Spain: Towards an Early Modern Reception Theory Part III: Drama 9. The Text and Authorship of Las cadenas del demonio 10. Playing Lope in Cervantes's Los baños de Argel 11. Play Rehearsals on the Golden Age Stage 12. Apariencias visibles? Façades of Triumph in Lope's Japan 13. Dialectic Spaces: Poetry and Architecture in Balbuena's Grandeza mexicana 14. Seeing the Old World from the New: Hernando Domínguez Camargo's Poema heroico 15. Adonde falta el rey, sobran agravios' (IV.5)? The Siege of Saint-Quentin and Two Worlds of War in Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana 16. Advice Fit for a King: Some Proposals on Governing Spanish Naples