Goodbye Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes ed. by Ana María Laguna and John Beusterien

Abstract

Reviewed by: Goodbye Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes ed. by Ana María Laguna and John Beusterien Mary-Anne Vetterling Laguna, Ana María, and John Beusterien, editors. Goodbye Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes. U of Toronto P, 2020. Pp. 281. ISBN 978-1-4875-0421-2. Goodbye Eros examines the theme of love in works by Cervantes and his contemporaries. It is a collection of eleven essays, written in English, on a variety of related topics: self-love, affection for animal companions, racialized love, and love in an epic context. All quotations and book titles appear in both English and Spanish. The book is organized around four general topics and each article concludes with endnotes and a bibliography. Also, there are brief biographies of the contributors, a general index, and an introduction. In Part I, “Ambiguous Optics,” Joan Cammarata and co-editor Ana María Laguna set forth an overview of various approaches to the Marcela and Grisóstomo episode in the Quijote. They contrast the traditional negative view of a self-centered Marcela with the contemporary feminist view where, rather, she is praised and admired for her independence and self-love. Mercedes Alcalá Galán discusses the ways in which “feminine adultery” and “deceived gaze” are depicted in Cervantes’s entremés “El viejo celoso” and in the intercalated “Curioso impertinente” story from the Quijote, along with their thematic and visual references to Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. She points out how Cervantes skillfully represents adulterous relationships through references to art (especially to tapestries) as well as through his own vivid descriptions. In Part II, “Reasoning the Unreasonable,” Eric Clifford Graf interprets several paintings by El Greco and various aspects of the Quijote via the lens of Euclidian geometry. Isosceles triangles in El Greco’s art and the many love triangles and plots conceived in a triangular format in Cervantes’s masterpiece illustrate how mathematics influenced the ways in which both men formulated their works. The Euclidian Pons asinorum in both El Greco and Cervantes leads us into a delightful discussion about bridges and donkeys in the Quijote as well as in El Greco’s paintings. Eli Cohen uses modern affect theory to shed light on “La gitanilla” in Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares. By contrasting the rationality and persuasiveness of Preciosa’s approach to love, with Andrés’s own emotionally charged declarations of love, Cohen demonstrates how Cervantes used these characters to introduce his readers to his story-telling techniques. Jesús Maestro applies what he terms an “anomic” perspective to his descriptions of a fascinating gallery of eccentric Cervantine characters in the Persiles whose lives are thwarted, especially in love and in their pursuit of freedom. Maestro demonstrates Cervantes’s artful use of these characters to subvert unsubstantiated beliefs, especially in the realms of politics, religion, and science. In Part III, “Kissing Between the Lines,” Adrienne L. Martín gives a delightful overview of lapdogs and women in Baroque Spanish erotic poetry, with a glance at such subjects as pet cemeteries and poems by Martial and Petrarch, along with three reproductions of paintings by Titian containing dogs. Her analysis of Góngora’s little-known letrilla “De un perrillo . . .” is brilliant, especially in the way she explains the puns, the references to botanical items that are also charged with sexual meaning, and the overall erotic connotations exuded by the poem. Quevedo’s ballad “A la jineta sentada” and the anonymous poem “El perrito” also benefit from her astute and well-informed analysis. Christina Lee, in a cogent and clearly written essay, writes about Moriscos in Cervantes with a focus on Cenotia in the Persiles. She provides us with an understanding of Cenotia’s perverse relationship with Antonio, together with references to the brutal way in which the Spanish government forced Moriscos into exile at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Co-editor John Beusterien links the presence of the Virgin of Montserrat in Francisco de Torre y Sevil’s La confesión con el demonio to a fascinating survey of background information about Black Madonnas in Spain, Saint Vincent Ferrer, rape, racism, the...