Cancionero Imagery and the Haptic Power of the Gaze in Roís Corella’s Història de Leànder i Hero

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to show the import of vision and visual discourses in the articulation of desire in Joan Roís de Corella’s fifteenth-century Història de Leànder i Hero. The topoi of the “arrows of love” and the power of the gaze to make others fall in love represent both the catalyst that sets in motion the passionate love of Hero and Leànder and the means through which the lovers express their desire and longings. After Hero and Leànder wound each other with the arrows of love, they cannot stop their life-long quest to apprehend visually each other either across the crowd of guests in the festivity or across the Hellespont. Hero’s tower, which becomes a metonym for Hero, is always within Leànder’s choric visual field and cannot stop staring until he dies. Like Leànder, when her lover is not in Sestos with her, Hero cannot stop gazing across the sea in search Leànder. Hence after Leànder drowns and the currents carry his corpse to the shore of Sestos, Hero opens his eyes and kisses them with her own eyes. The eyes-to-eyes kiss underscores and attests to the preeminence of vision and visual theories in forming and conveying desire through sight. Corella, then, uses optical theories, extant during his own time, to showcase the power of the gaze in the articulation and expression of human behavior and desire.