FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A NARCISSISTIC LOVER: JOAN ROÍS DE CORELLA’S TRAGEDIA DE CALDESA

Abstract

The definition of “tragedy” in the cultural context of the early Renaissance is of paramount significance in the history of Spanish literature. One of the most intriguing cases in point pertains to the Tragèdia de Caldesa, a compact composition by Joan Roís de Corella (ca. 1433-1497), a noted humanist and theologian from Valencia. Here I propose a fresh reading of Corella’s masterpiece by focussing on the inner world of the lover - i.e., the author’s persona - who, from a narcissistic perspective, confronts the conflictive interplay of the male and female roles. Recent scholarship reveals as a correlative of the narcissism in question a text of solitude and alienation, the leading exponents of which may be found throughout the fifteenth century in the great masters of love-centered literature in both Castilian and Catalan. Among these oustanding authors, Ausiàs March, the nonpareil Valencian poet, transforms the indices of solitude and alienation into his own poetics of subjectivity. In the wake of March’s innovatory legacy, a group of gifted authors, who flourished in Barcelona or Valencia in the second half of the fifteenth century, evolved a distinctive literary mode endowed with theatrical potential. Arguably, it is this kind of theatricality that comes into play in the landmark creation of Corella’s all-important Tragèdia.