Neo Stoicism And Skepticism In Part One Of Don Quijote

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Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote

Author : Daniel Lorca
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1498522661
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote by : Daniel Lorca

Download or read book Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote written by Daniel Lorca and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how Cervantes took advantage of neo-stoicism and skepticism to remove the authority of the romances of chivalry, which was a popular genre during his time. It also explains why his strategy, which would have been instantly recognizable during the period, is no longer effective: our current moral systems are significantly different from the moral systems that were influential during Cervantes’s time, and consequently, what used to be self-evident is no longer the case. Therefore, this book may be useful to the literary critic interested in the philosophical foundations of Don Quijote, to the moral philosopher interested in the differences between pre-enlightenment virtue-ethics and current moral systems, and also in the field of the history of ideas. Don Quijote offers a unique opportunity to observe changes in moral thinking throughout time because it is a universal book, discussed extensively throughout out the centuries, and therefore the on-going discussion offers strong evidence to discover how morality has changed, and continues to change, through time.

Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France

Author : Ann T. Delehanty
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000825264
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France by : Ann T. Delehanty

Download or read book Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France written by Ann T. Delehanty and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-16 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines five early modern novels from the seventeenth century in Spain and France as examples of literature as a form of skeptical inquiry: Cervantes’s Don Quijote, Zayas’s Desengaños amorosos, Scarron’s Roman comique, Cyrano de Bergerac’s L’Autre Monde, and Mme. de Lafayette’s Zayde. These early modern novels encourage readers to take a critical stance toward accepted beliefs, through content that stages multiple encounters with the shockingly unfamiliar as well as through experiments in literary form, especially the interpolated story. At its broadest reach, this study asserts the fundamental value of literature as a means of encouraging discernment, recognizing the illusory, and honing critical acuity. In terms of the particularity of the historical moment, the volume also identifies the early modern novel as uniquely able to represent the conflicting value spheres of early modernity because of its ability to present multiple voices and its fascination with conflicting vantage points. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, Disenchantment, Skepticism, and the Early Modern Novel in Spain and France appeals to literary scholars and intellectual historians of the early modern period in Europe, as well as to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates studying the early novel, intellectual history, and philosophy of literature.

Don Quixote’s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature

Author : William Franke
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040089348
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Don Quixote’s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature by : William Franke

Download or read book Don Quixote’s Impossible Quest for the Absolute in Literature written by William Franke and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a reading particularly of Part II of Don Quixote, a reading that is embedded in a philosophical reflection on the revelation of religious truth in and through literature. Part II of Don Quixote is the far richer part for its meta-literary reflection on the novel itself as a genre and on life as such seen through the lens of self-reflection. The author has treated the phenomenon of modern self-reflexivity as originally theological in nature in previous publications (notably Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection, Routledge, 2021). The present endeavor expands this overall intellectual project, extending it into detailed consideration of what is recognizably another nodal great work inaugurating unprecedented forms of self-reflection in the early modern period. Reading the founding texts of literary and cultural tradition in this negative-theological key proves crucial to allowing them to release the full force of their religious vision in the present age, despite its sometimes obstinate secularity. This reading absorbs and reconciles the religious and secular readings of Miguel de Unamuno and José Ortega y Gasset, two of Spain’s outstanding philosophical luminaries. Both thinkers based their entire philosophies and their analyses of the Spanish national character and destiny on their interpretations of the Quixote. Negative theology deploys critical reason that critiques the limits of reason itself and opens toward an unfathomable (un)ground of All. Such speculative interpretation performs a synthesis of the secularizing and sacralizing tendencies that are both sublimely operative in the text of the Quixote. It thereby enables the work to emerge in the fully parodic and paradoxical vitality that other interpretations, governed by one paradigm or the other, access only partially. Rather than falling into one camp or the other, the proposed approach combines and resources both heritages, sacred and secular, in their deepest synergisms. Spanish baroque mysticism and contemporary post-secular thought are made to converge in highlighting the blessed, even sacred, donation that literature like Don Quixote preserves and transmits as our most precious and saving cultural heritage.

Affective Geographies

Author : Paul Michael Johnson
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1487507518
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (875 download)

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Book Synopsis Affective Geographies by : Paul Michael Johnson

Download or read book Affective Geographies written by Paul Michael Johnson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2021-02-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By reading the works of Miguel de Cervantes through the history of emotion, this book defies a series of long-standing commonplaces about the author's writing and the Mediterranean region at large.

Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World

Author : Michelle Karnes
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226819752
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World by : Michelle Karnes

Download or read book Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World written by Michelle Karnes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It is a commonplace that marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers' stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature, but also in the period's philosophic writing: magical objects with hard-to-explain powers abound. This is the first book to analyze these different bodies of writing alongside one another, comparing texts from both the Latin West (including writings in English, French, Italian, and Spanish) and in Arabic on the topic, attempting a unifying theory of marvels across different disciplines and cultures. Michelle Karnes tells an untold story of the parallels between Arabic and Latin thought, reminding us that the strange and the unfamiliar travel unusually well across a range of genres, spanning geographical and conceptual space, and offers an ideal vantage point from which to understand Arabic and Latin intercultural exchange. Employing the notion of the near-impossibility, Karnes traverses this diverse archive, marking the outer boundaries of both nature's capabilities and human creativity. Imagination, she shows, invests marvels with their character and, ultimately, their power. Skirting the distinction between the real and unreal, the true and the false, imagination, for Karnes, endows marvels with indeterminacy and import, imbuing them with inherently interdisciplinary, boundary-resistant, perplexing properties. These near-impossibilities cannot be conclusively discounted; rather, they challenge readers to discover the highest capabilities of both nature and the human intellect. Karnes offers here a rare, comparative perspective and a new methodology to study a topic long recognized to be central to medieval culture"--

Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote

Author : Daniel Lorca
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781498522656
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (226 download)

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Book Synopsis Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote by : Daniel Lorca

Download or read book Neo-Stoicism and Skepticism in Part One of Don Quijote written by Daniel Lorca and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains how Cervantes took advantage of the moral aspects of neo-stoicism and skepticism to remove the authority of the romances of chivalry, which was a popular genre during his time. By comparing and contrasting current moral systems to the moral theories of Cervantes's time, the book also explains why his strategy, which would have been instantly recognizable during the period, is no longer effective.

The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

Author : Ricardo Duchesne
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004192484
Total Pages : 540 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Uniqueness of Western Civilization by : Ricardo Duchesne

Download or read book The Uniqueness of Western Civilization written by Ricardo Duchesne and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After challenging the multicultural effort to “provincialize” the history of Western civilization, this book argues that the roots of the West’s exceptional creativity should be traced back to the uniquely aristocratic warlike culture of Indo-European speakers.

Anatomy of Liberty in Don Quijote de la Mancha

Author : Eric Clifford Graf
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793601194
Total Pages : 291 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Anatomy of Liberty in Don Quijote de la Mancha by : Eric Clifford Graf

Download or read book Anatomy of Liberty in Don Quijote de la Mancha written by Eric Clifford Graf and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anatomy of Liberty in Don Quijote de la Manchapresents five major facets of liberty as they appear in the first modern novel. Analyzing the novelist’s attitudes towards religion, feminism, slavery, politics, and economics, Graf argues that Cervantes should be considered a major precursor to great liberal thinkers like Locke, Smith, Mill, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jefferson, Madison, and Twain. Graf indicates not only the medieval and early modern grounds for Cervantes’s ideas but also the ways in which he anticipated and influenced a wide range of modern articulations of personal freedom. Resistance to tyranny, freedom of conscience, the liberation of women, the abolition of slavery, and the principles of a free market economy are all still fundamental to modern Western Civilization, making Don Quiijote de la Mancha extremely relevant to today’s world. Anatomy of Liberty walks us through how Cervantes’s seminal work both foreshadowed and relates to today’s modern society.

The Western Experience

Author : Mortimer Chambers
Publisher : McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages
ISBN 13 : 9780070110663
Total Pages : 1196 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Western Experience by : Mortimer Chambers

Download or read book The Western Experience written by Mortimer Chambers and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages. This book was released on 1995 with total page 1196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: V.1. From the Renaisasnce to the Moder Era -- v. 2. Since the Sixteenth Century.

Perceptions of Magic in Medieval Spanish Literature

Author : Jennifer M. Corry
Publisher : Lehigh University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780934223812
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (238 download)

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Book Synopsis Perceptions of Magic in Medieval Spanish Literature by : Jennifer M. Corry

Download or read book Perceptions of Magic in Medieval Spanish Literature written by Jennifer M. Corry and published by Lehigh University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is an attempt to capture a more comprehensive view of medieval Spain's perceptions of magical practice in order to determine why Spain did not explode into Witchcraze, as occurred in so many other European regions when the Middle Ages slipped into the Renaissance."

Memory and Trauma in the Postwar Spanish Novel

Author : Sarah Leggott
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611485312
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Memory and Trauma in the Postwar Spanish Novel by : Sarah Leggott

Download or read book Memory and Trauma in the Postwar Spanish Novel written by Sarah Leggott and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, much Spanish literary criticism has been characterized by debates about collective and historical memory, stemming from a national obsession with the past that has seen an explosion of novels and films about the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship. This growth of so-called memory studies in literary scholarship has focused on the representation of memory and trauma in contemporary narratives dealing with the Civil War and ensuing dictatorship. In contrast, the novel of the postwar period has received relatively little critical attention of late, despite the fact that memory and trauma also feature, in different ways and to varying degrees, in many works written during the Franco years. The essays in this study argue that such novels merit a fresh critical approach, and that contemporary scholarship relating to the representation of memory and trauma in literature can enhance our understanding of the postwar Spanish novel. The volume opens with essays that engage with aspects of contemporary theoretical approaches to memory in order to reveal the ways in which these are pertinent to Spanish novels written in the first postwar decades, with studies on novels by Camilo José Cela, Carmen Laforet, Arturo Barea and Ana María Matute. Its second section focuses on the representation of trauma in specific postwar novels, drawing on elements from trauma studies scholarship to discuss neglected works by Mercedes Salisachs, Dolores Medio and Ignacio Aldecoa. The final essays continue the focus on the theme of trauma and revisit works by women writers, namely Carmen Laforet, Rosa Chacel, Ana María Matute and María Zambrano, that foreground the experiences of female protagonists who are seeking to deal with a traumatic past. The essays in this volume thus propose a new direction for the study of Spanish literature of 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, enhancing existing approaches to the postwar Spanish novel through an engagement with contemporary scholarship on memory and trauma in literature.

Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain

Author : Thomas C. Neal
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611488311
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain by : Thomas C. Neal

Download or read book Writing the Americas in Enlightenment Spain written by Thomas C. Neal and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1931-07-31 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did literary discourse about empire contribute to discussions about the implications of modernity and progress in eighteenth-century Spain? Writing the Americas seeks to answer this question by examining how novels, plays and short stories imagined and contested core notions about enlightened knowledge. Expanding upon recent transatlantic and postcolonial approaches to Spain's Enlightenment that have focused mostly on historiographical and scientific texts, this book disputes the long-standing perception of the Spanish Enlightenment as an "imitative" movement best defined best by its similarities with French and British contexts. Instead, through readings of major and minor texts by authors such as José Cadalso, Gaspar Melchor Jovellanos, Pedro Montengón and José María Blanco White, Writing the Americas argues that literary texts advanced a unique exploration of the compatibility between supposed universal principles and local histories, one which often diverged noticeably from dominant trends and patterns in Enlightenment thought elsewhere. The authors studied often drew directly from Spain's own imperial experiences to submit prevailing ideas about culture, commerce, education and political organization to scrutiny. Writing the Americas provides a new critical lens through which to reexamine the aesthetic and political content of eighteenth-century Spanish cultural production. While in the past, much of the debate about whether Spanish neoclassicism was "modern" literature has centered on formalistic qualities or romantic notions of "originality" or "subjectivity," ultimately, Writing the Americas locates the modernity of these literary works within the very ideological tensions they display towards the prevailing intellectual trends of the time. The interdisciplinary content and approach of Writing the Americas make it a valuable resource for a broad range of scholars including specialists in eighteenth-century and modern Hispanic literature and culture, colonial Hispanic literature and culture, transatlantic American studies, European Enlightenment studies, and modernity studies.

Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders

Author : Raquel Vega-Durán
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611487412
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders by : Raquel Vega-Durán

Download or read book Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders written by Raquel Vega-Durán and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders: Migrants, Transnational Encounters, and Identity in Spain offers a new approach to the cultural history of contemporary Spain, examining the ways in which Spain’s own self-conceptions are changing and multiplying in response to migrants from Latin America and Africa. In the last twenty-five years, Spain has gone from being a country of net emigration to one in which immigrants make up nearly 12 percent of the population. This rapid growth has made migrants increasingly visible in both mass media and in Spanish visual and literary culture. This book examines the origins of media discourses on immigration and takes the analysis of contemporary Spanish culture as its primary framework, while also drawing insights from sociology and history. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders introduces readers to a wide range of recent films, journals, novels, photography, paintings, and music to reconsider contemporary Spain through its varied encounters with migrants. It follows the stages of the migrant’s own journey, beginning outside Spanish territory, continuing across the border (either at the barbed-wire fences of Ceuta and Melilla or the waters of the Atlantic or the Strait of Gibraltar), and then considers what happens to migrants after they arrive and settle in Spain. Each chapter analyzes one of these stages in order to illustrate the complexity of contemporary Spanish identity. This examination of Spanish culture shows how Spain is evolving into a new space of imagination, one that can no longer be defined without the migrant—a space in which there is no unified identity but rather a new self-understanding is being born. Vega-Durán both places Spain in a larger European context and draws attention to some of the features that, from a comparative perspective, make the Spanish case interesting and often unique. She argues that Spain cannot be understood today outside the Transatlantic and Mediterranean spaces (both real and imaginary) where Spaniards and migrants meet. Emigrant Dreams, Immigrant Borders offers a timely study of present-day Spain, and makes an original contribution to the vibrant debates about multiculturalism and nation-formation that are taking

Literature of Crisis

Author : Olga Bezhanova
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1611488370
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Literature of Crisis by : Olga Bezhanova

Download or read book Literature of Crisis written by Olga Bezhanova and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores novels, essays and poetry published by Spanish writers in response to the global economic crisis that began in 2008. Spain has been experiencing the crisis in a particularly painful way, and the artistic response to these traumatic events has been powerful and abundant. The literature of the crisis is pointing to the probability that the crisis is not a temporary problem that will be resolved once and for all if correct economic measures are taken. To the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the losses in long-term employment, the growing precariousness of work, the increased economic insecurity, the citizens' disillusionment with the capacity of democratic governments to withstand the pressures of global capital, the erosion of the welfare state, and the explosive growth in inequality that we associate with the crisis are not likely to be reversed. Spanish artists are exploring the reasons behind Spain's particularly painful experience of the crisis and, at the same time, are placing the suffering that the crisis is causing in Spain within the context of global developments that are ensuring its durability. Essays by Antonio Muñoz Molina and Lucía Etxebarria, novels by Rafael Chirbes, Luis García Montero, Benjamín Prado, and Belén Gopegui, and poetry by the artists who contributed to the collections titled En legítima defensa. Poetas en tiempos de crisis and Marca(da) España. Retrato poético de una sociedad en crisis point to the necessity of expanding our vision of the crisis from the purely financial to a broader definition that will include the changes the crisis augurs for the areas of human existence that lie outside the strictly economic realm.

Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women

Author : Sarah Leggott
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
ISBN 13 : 161148667X
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women by : Sarah Leggott

Download or read book Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women written by Sarah Leggott and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memory, War, and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women analyzes five novels by women writers that present women’s experiences during and after the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship, highlighting the struggles of female protagonists of different ages to confront an unresolved individual and collective past. It discusses the different narrative models and strategies used in these works and the ways in which they engage with their political and historical context, particularly in the light of campaigns for the so-called recovery of historical memory in Spain (the “memory boom”) and in the broader context of memory and trauma studies. The novels that are examined in this book are Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002), Rosa Regàs’s Luna lunera (1999), Josefina Aldecoa’s La fuerza del destino (1997), Carme Riera’s La mitad del alma (2005), and Almudena Grandes’s El corazón helado (2007). These works all highlight the multiple nature of memories and histories and demonstrate the complex ways in which the past impacts on the present. This book also considers the extent to which the memories represented in these five novels are inflected by gender and informed by the gender politics of twentieth-century and contemporary Spain.

The Pursuit of Harmony

Author : Aviva Rothman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022649702X
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The Pursuit of Harmony by : Aviva Rothman

Download or read book The Pursuit of Harmony written by Aviva Rothman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-11-03 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A committed Lutheran excommunicated from his own church, a friend to Catholics and Calvinists alike, a layman who called himself a “priest of God,” a Copernican in a world where Ptolemy still reigned, a man who argued at the same time for the superiority of one truth and the need for many truths to coexist—German astronomer Johannes Kepler was, to say the least, a complicated figure. With The Pursuit of Harmony, Aviva Rothman offers a new view of him and his achievements, one that presents them as a story of Kepler’s attempts to bring different, even opposing ideas and circumstances into harmony. Harmony, Rothman shows, was both the intellectual bedrock for and the primary goal of Kepler’s disparate endeavors. But it was also an elusive goal amid the deteriorating conditions of his world, as the political order crumbled and religious war raged. In the face of that devastation, Kepler’s hopes for his theories changed: whereas he had originally looked for a unifying approach to truth, he began instead to emphasize harmony as the peaceful coexistence of different views, one that could be fueled by the fundamentally nonpartisan discipline of mathematics.

Authority, Piracy, and Captivity in Colonial Spanish American Writing

Author : Emiro Martínez-Osorio
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1611487196
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (114 download)

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Book Synopsis Authority, Piracy, and Captivity in Colonial Spanish American Writing by : Emiro Martínez-Osorio

Download or read book Authority, Piracy, and Captivity in Colonial Spanish American Writing written by Emiro Martínez-Osorio and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authority, Piracy, and Captivity in Colonial Spanish American Writing examines the intricate bond between poetry and history writing that shaped the theory and practice of empire in early colonial Spanish-American society. The book explores from diverse perspectives how epic and heroic poetry served to construe a new Spanish-American elite of original explorers and conquistadors in Juan de Castellanos’s Elegies of Illustrious Men of the Indies. Similarly, this book offers an interpretation of Castellanos’s writings that shows his critical engagement with the reformist project postulated in Alonso de Ercilla’s LaAraucana, and it elucidates the complex poetic discourse Castellanos created to defend the interests of the early generation of explorers and conquistadors in the aftermath of the promulgation of the New Laws and the mounting criticism of the institution of the encomienda. Within the larger context of a new poetics of imperialistic expansion, this book shows how the Elegies offers one of the earliest examples of the reconfiguration of some of the main tenets of Petrarchism/Garcilacism, as well as the bold transmutation of dominant poetic discourses that had until then been typically associated with the nobility. Focusing on the practice of poetic imitation (imitatio) and the themes of authority, piracy, and captivity, this book shows the transformation undergone by heroic poetry owing to Europe’s encounter with America and illustrates the contribution of learned heroic verse to the emergence of a Spanish-American literary tradition.