De Amor Research Articles

Дантовский сюжет о Франческе и Паоло в испанской литературе XV–XVII вв.

The article discusses the reception of the Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia) by Dante Alighieri and, in particular, of Canto 5 of the Inferno and its central episode — Dante’s encounter with Francesca and Paolo, in Spanish literature of the 15th–17th centuries. It began at the end of the initial third of the 15th century that was caused by late reception of the European courtesy tradition in Spain. Old translations of Infierno by Dante (Enrique de Villena, Pedro Fernández de Villegas) saw in the story of Francesca and Paolo first and foremost a cautionary example of the tragic effect of the courteous poetry and its ideals on real fates of people, thus partly determining further ways of perception of the narrative of killed lovers and its effect on the Spanish poetry and drama. The brightest expression of this idea is the episode, where Marquess de Santillana, hero of El Triumphete de Amor vision, meets the Dante’s characters and the “dona de Ravenna” gives place to Galician troubadour Macias. The national legend and didactic representation of Dante’s episode forced the narrative of Francesca and Paolo out of the Spanish literature. Lope de Vega’s play titled El castigo sin venganza written on the basis of the plot of Bandello’s novella and transformed under the influence of Dante’s episode became in a way the return to the initial and tragic essence of the story of two lovers.

"ПРИНЦЕССА ГРЁЗА": МЕЖДУ ЛИТЕРАТУРНЫМ ОБРАЗОМ И ИСТОРИЧЕСКИМ ПЕРСОНАЖЕМ

This article attempts to reconstruct the historical context in which the well-known verses on “distant love” (amor de lohn), composed by the Provençal poet Jaufré Rudel, gave rise to a legend that became popular in medieval literature. A romantic story about a troubadour who fell in love with a Beautiful Lady gained extraordinary popularity among the romantics of the 19th century. It was used in a number of literary works of various genres – from the poems of Francesco Petrarca, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Uhland, to Edmond Rostand’s play “The Distant Princess” (La Princesse Lointaine). For the first time the Distant Princess, with whom the troubadour supposedly fell in love without ever seeing her, was identified with the Countess of Tripoli in the legendary vida of the troubadour dating from the mid-13th century. Later, we see the story repeated many times in the literary monuments including the works of romantics of the 19th and 20th centuries. Traditionally, literary scholars debate the question whether the Countess of Tripoli should be considered as a fictitious character or a historical figure. Avoiding that dispute, the author seeks to single out those events and facts in the history of the house of Tripoli and its members that could be reinterpreted in the folk imagination and historical memory

Action and seduction

Action and seduction

Schopenhauer in Dante’s Garden of Eden: Melancholy and Rubén Darío’s “Autumnal”

Schopenhauer in Dante’s Garden of Eden: Melancholy and Rubén Darío’s “Autumnal”

Sol Miguel-Prendes. Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain

Sol Miguel-Prendes. <i>Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain</i>

O “Selfie” na tela: Práticas de autorrepresentação no documentário brasileiro contemporâneo

The purpose of this article is to analyze the new cinematographic languages emerging in contemporary documentary made in Brazil, discussing the use of cell phones as a filmic self-representation equipment. It seeks to understand how this new language advances in the documentary field and how this “selfie” device implies new poetic and narrative expressions. Therefore, we will analyze two documentary films, the feature film “Cinema de amor” (Edson Bastos and Henrique Filho, 2019) and the short film “à beira do planeta mainha soprou a gente” (Bruna Barros and Bruna Castro, 2020). The hybridization process of narrative fiction can be identified in these two films, which leads us to ask whether this process can be a significant means for building new fields of experimentation for the “self” on screen. It is possible to pay attention to the new codes and conventions that arise to give voice to political-identity discourses in which aspects of the personal experience and the subjectivity of the filmmakers expands the relation to what belongs to the private domain and what belongs to the public domain, alternating between them.

Adendas a la bibliografía de Horacio Quiroga

The written Work of Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) includes novels, poetry, dramaturgy, journalistic texts, and, fundamentally, stories, and was published first and foremost in the various illustrated magazines of the early twentieth century where the Uruguayan author collaborated. Only a part was collected in books by Quiroga himself. Since 1955 an accurate list of all his collaborations has been made and, also, a large part of his work has been published in various anthologies and in different complete works projects. Our research adds to this repertoire some bibliographic findings: the existence of two short stories, not belonging to any bibliographic list or to any compilation of their narrative writings; “Una carta de amor” and “La cacería”; the appearance of his first journalistic film “note”, “El Teatro Mudo: elogio del cinematógrafo”, which is not part of any list or of the compilations of Quiroga’s cinematographic texts; and, finally, the existence of the editio princeps of Cuentos de la Selva, one of his best known books. The three texts found, which are from 1917, as well as the illustrated editio princeps of Cuentos de la Selva from 1918 must be included in Horacio Quiroga’s bibliographic repertoire and must form part of the new editions of his complete work.

‘Warma Kuyay (Amor de Niño)’ By Josê María Arguedas: A Dialectic Prelude to Liberation Ecotheology

Abstract José María Arguedas’ Peruvian short story ‘Warma Kuyay (Amor de niño)’ culminates with the punishment of a calf, as a result of the white landlord’s sexual violation of Justina, an indigenous woman. This article argues that that theoretical discussions in ecotheology offer fruitful tools for analysing the story, resonating with Andean cosmologies and enabling us to think more seriously about Arguedas’ intersectional theological thoughts. ‘Warma Kuyay’ prefaces theological ecocriticism, foreseeing current developments in liberation theology which do not just emphasise class, but other categories of identity.

Desiertos de amor (2018) by Raúl Zurita: between poetry, image and voice

After a brief contextualization of the author's biography, I present the volume Desierto de amor (2018) by Raúl Zurita, realized with González y Los Asistentes (music) and Massimo Giacon (comic), as a significant example of a hybrid literary product that mixes poems, music and comics. The transmedial and trimodal work uses different media that merge each other. The poem, a migrant text halfway between slam poetry and poetry in music, alternates and superimposes itself on music and poetry comix. Reflecting on the potentialities of transmediality and intersemiotic translation, I analyze how transcoding into other languages ​​brings added value to the poetic text because it creates an intertextual dialogue that produces a new reception mechanism. The visual and auditory reading takes place in a different space and time, with new expressive modalities and ways of reaching the addressee.

Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain by Sol Miguel-Prendes

Reviewed by: Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain by Sol Miguel-Prendes Loreto Romero Miguel-Prendes, Sol. Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain. U of North Carolina P, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5195-8. Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain brings forth a new framework against which to explore the rise, techniques, and momentum of sentimental fiction. Sol Miguel-Prendes traces the origins of this uniquely Iberian genre to the ars dictaminis, Franciscan contemplative practices, and Catalan penitential consolations, which developed from the former two in the Crown of Aragon. Contrary to a general tendency amongst critics to read sentimental fictions against a courtly background and the materia de amore tradition, Miguel-Prendes highlights their Christian discursive fabric, first noticed by Deyermond. Building on her seminal article "Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work: Cárcel de amor" (2004), she proposes that sentimental fictions participated in a prayer-book mentality that stemmed from the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council. Narrating Desire unearths a genealogy that goes back to Augustine's Confessions and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, both of which were at the core of monastic practices of reading as affective meditation and moral conversion. At a time when the spread of literacy had begun to provide a more private and intimate connection with the written letter, these practices reached the laity through the liberal arts curriculum and the evangelizing efforts of the Franciscan order. In their distortion of the rhetoric of consolation due to the force of imagination, Sol Miguel-Prendes concludes, sentimental fictions came to life heralding the modern novel. The book consists of three lengthy chapters, which in their turn are divided into in several sections. Throughout each chapter and its subdivisions, Miguel-Prendes uncovers the intellectual and literary roots of sentimental fiction. She delineates the genre's boundaries, cultural contexts, and motives in light of contemplative lay practices as they translated into Catalan and Castilian literature. Although she doesn't substantially alter the types of narratives traditionally considered as works of sentimental fictions, she redefines the parameters of the genre distancing it from the influence of the Italian triad—Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio—and bringing it closer to late-medieval educational works on virtuous living. Narrating Desire accounts for the uses and recasting of dictaminal compositional techniques (dream vision, pseudo-autobiography, the debate of Reason and Will, among [End Page 240] others) and motives (such as maritime metaphors to signify the violence of desire) in Catalan and Castilian fictions and it traces a multilingual network of influence and exchange. Miguel-Prendes underscores the productivity of allegory, which—in her opinion—allows for the emergence of desire and individuality. In narratives of consolation, the blind seer Tiresias and Lady Philosophy have a therapeutic role, whereas the lovesick Orpheus, like the Muses, stands for the inspired madness of the poetic imagination. As Tiresias is displaced by Orpheus and Lady Philosophy and the Muses by a woman, the balance of desire and conversion tilts towards desire and imagination in ways crucial to the development of sentimental fictions and to the novel in general terms. Drawing from Bakhtin, Miguel-Prendes situates the precursory status of works of sentimental fiction in their disassociation of the moral gaze from the curious glance. Chapter 1, "The Consolation of Schoolmen," focuses on the adaptation of classical authors to Christian ethics in the homosocial school environment, where the Augustinian-Boethian philosophy of contemptus mundi clashed with the violent eroticism of Ovidian and Pseudo-Ovidian narratives. Miguel-Prendes argues that the genre of the lover's consolation came into being as a result of the confrontation between a stoic model of masculinity that championed the rational man's power over his natural impulses and the lurid imagery of classical texts, which most likely prompted young minds towards the delights of carnal reading and of reading for entertainment. This chapter is key to her main thesis that sentimental fiction skewed the ethical reading practices proffered by their school environment. The author explores a wide variety of Peninsular literary consolations rooted in Boethius: among them, Petrus Compostellanus's De...

Vida escénica de ‘La Celestina’ en España (1909–2019) by María Bastianes

 Reviews causes his downfall’ (p. ). Sentimental fictions rework the role of erotic desire in penitential fictions—as an energy that can be exploited for ethical conversion—into desire for narrative innovation. Miguel-Prendes restricts her analysis to works that feature a dream-vision frame or distort the consolation: Pedro de Portugal’s Sátira de infelice e felice vida; Triste deleytación; Francesc Alegre’s Somni and Rehonament; Juan de Flores’s Grimalte y Gradisa; and San Pedro’s Arnalte y Lucenda and Cárcel de amor. e chapter discusses other works that contain sentimental content but do not utilize the dream vision (e.g. Flores’s Grisel y Mirabella) to demarcate the genre’s boundaries (pp. –). e consolatory mode is thus transformed by ‘caballeros sçientes’ from maleoriented penitential fictions into sentimental fictions read by men and women at court. Narrating Desire is a major contribution to scholarship on both sentimental fiction and its literary and scholastic antecedents. Miguel-Prendes’s work effectively synthesizes all that came before and provides a clear argument as to why this new way of reading the genre gives it its long-wished-for unity. Summaries of the works discussed, together with English translations of quotations, also importantly open up this topic to a broader readership. H C, O R D S Vida escénica de ‘La Celestina’ en España (–). By M B. (Spanish Golden Age Studies) Oxford: Peter Lang. . xx+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. is exhaustive survey of theatrical representations of the Spanish masterpiece Celestina is not for the faint-hearted, and it helps if, like me, you have edited the text once or twice before, and thus can follow the extensive analyses of sub-acts and passages which have been removed, augmented, abridged, or otherwise altered for theatrical production. e problem, quite simply, is that the long sixteen- or twenty-one-act work is a dialogue novel and cannot be presented on the stage unless extensive surgery is performed. is means that the true genius of the work, its portrayal of figures who evolve and are influenced by the other characters, cannot be conveyed convincingly on stage and, essentially, we are oen given a plot summary rather than a genuine version. It is rather like claiming to have seen Romeo and Juliet aer attending the ballet, which itself is wonderful in the Prokofiev/MacMillan version but is not Shakespeare. However, some of the contradictions of Fernando de Rojas’s work about two lovers, less star-crossed than corrupted (by the cynicism of their servants and the go-between, sorceress, and possible witch Celestina), can be conveyed in semaphoric form, particularly the choice between Celestina’s forensic powers versus her putative witchcra to explain how the virgin Melibea is convinced so apparently easily, and seduced by the both parodic and basically cynical Calisto. María Bastianes’s analysis of the staging of the work since the s points out that my work and that of June Hall Martin [McCash] on parody—especially MLR, .,   as regards the figure of Calisto as inept courtly lover—has influenced numerous interpretations. e social realism of José Antonio Maravall’s work was similarly important for many productions from the s and s. It took international stagings by Jeanne Moreau (France), Robert Lepage (Spain and Italy), and Calixto Bieito (Edinburgh) to really set the ball rolling, and there was a veritable explosion of versions in the noughties and teens, especially among those small local theatres and travelling troupes in Spain that specialize in making set texts for the baccalaureate more accessible for students. Before that happened, the daunting and sexually quite explicit text was adapted very infrequently, and the fairly successful  version was not followed by another attempt until aer the Civil War in . A long silence followed again until the Franco period was nearing its end and liberalizing somewhat. Huberto Pérez de la Ossa and Luis Escobar’s version of – was popular in the early s, and Alejandro Casona’s adaptation had legs in the mid to late s. But it was not until the post-Franco era of the Movida that the sexual components of the plot were exploited, on...

Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los siglos de oro by Luis F. Avilés

Reviewed by: Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los siglos de oro by Luis F. Avilés Aliza Levenson (bio) and Ana Laguna (bio) Luis F. Avilés. Avatares de lo invisible: Espacio y subjetividad en los siglos de oro. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2017. 228 pp. ISBN: 978-84-16922-04-8. Luis Avilés's title, Avatares de lo invisible, alludes to the wide range of figurative and literal spaces that manifest their weight in the fluid subjectivities (racial, ethnic, and gendered) portrayed by Spanish Golden Age literature. If some loci are unsurprising in this spatial inquiry—the house, the court, the battlefield—the nuanced analysis of how selected texts position their subjects existentially, socially, and politically results in new and refreshing revelations. Avilés illustrates the experiential consequences of these spatial appropriations, demonstrating how both physical spaces and invisible liminalities shape literary characters and topoi in the early modern cultural tradition. The interwoven relationship between self and space is revealed in the idea of "amor distante y de oídas," explored in the first chapter. Avilés reads texts like Ibn Hazm de Córdoba's El Collar de la paloma, Razón de Amor, and Don Quijote, highlighting a spatially mediated concept of love that recalls classical referents like Cicero's De amicitia. In the second chapter, Avilés leaves love behind to focus on the view of the court presented by Antonio Guevara in his Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea (1539). Here, he deconstructs the idea of self-fashioning through a granular exploration of how the court's public and private spaces determine the internal and external selves of courtly subjects, who are painfully aware of the official processes and "invisible" machinations that might approve of, support, or betray them. For Avilés, the weight of this pressured awareness is akin to a yoke, un yugo, that severely limits the subject's freedom of movement. Avilés reads a similar environment in Guevara's idea of aldea: an external space almost as threatening to one's internal self as the court, despite the apparently greater liberties that this rural escape affords. In his third chapter, Avilés complicates the idea of an external and "prescriptive" space of conflict by focusing on the Christian and Moorish frontier of Granada, which he reads as a hybrid space shaped as much by dialogue and exchange as by conflict and warfare. In El Abencerraje, those opposing forces are manifested in the warring antagonists, Abencerraje and Abindarráez, who, despite being formidable opponents, are able to craft—thanks to the erosion of war and the vulnerability of exile—an intimate space conducive to mutual understanding, and even kinship. Contrary to historical reality, and to Covarrubias's view of the borderland as a site of clear division between lands [End Page 206] and political jurisdictions (107), Avilés sees the frontier as a porous, liminal space full of varying possibilities for dialogue and cooperation. The last chapter explores, through Lazarillo de Tormes, a much different space: the domestic environment that signifies both a shelter and a social achievement (un buen puerto). Avilés insists on the shelter dimension, since the domestic space allows the early modern subject a place to hide, to remain invisible from the social pressures or external expectations that surround him. This notion that the subject is an aspiring, autonomous entity shaped in relation to others is supported by critics like Judith Butler and Nietzsche and correlated, on a purely literary level, to the anonymity of the novel. For Avilés, such anonymity is not coincidental, as it provides the author a larger narrative autonomy, and even shelter from social and moral constraints (157). Specialists and students of the Spanish Golden Age will appreciate the wide array of literary sources and theoretical approaches employed in Avilés analysis, which includes—besides Cicero, Butler, and Nietzsche, critics like Foucault and Claudio Guillén. Through this eclectic framework, the author provides an intriguing view of early modern subjectivity in constant dialogue with its surrounding spatial demarcation. Rather than presenting a world turned into a stage, Avilés uncovers the disparate worlds of separate stages that determine...

Invisibile come Dio: la vita e l'opera di Gabriele Biondo by Michele Lodone

MLR, .,   Invisibile come Dio: la vita e l’opera di Gabriele Biondo. By M L. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale. .  pp. €. ISBN ––––. is volume is the first monograph dedicated to the life and works of the secular priest Gabriele Biondo (d. ), who, unlike his father (the historian Flavio Biondo), has so far failed to attract significant scholarly attention. In order to contextualize Gabriele Biondo’s ‘silent and secluded Christian testimony’ (p. ), Michele Lodone places him against the background of the religious landscape of pre-Reformation Italy. Lodone’s book is divided into two parts. Part  examines the main events of Biondo’s life in chronological order. Evidence of Biondo’s upbringing in the Roman Curia is in short supply, but Lodone surveys a range of sources which together produce a portrait of a young man who was an uneasy member of Roman society. rough his discovery of controversial authors such as Angelo Clareno, Ubertino da Casale, Peter John Olivi, and Jacopone da Todi, Biondo underwent a radical conversion and arrived at a highly original understanding of Christian revelation. It was Biondo’s reading of these Franciscan authors that triggered in him the desire to disentangle himself from the ties he had formed with the religious environment in Rome, leading ultimately to a profound sense of isolation (which his relocation to Modigliana did nothing to alleviate). Biondo’s humanist education and familiarity with scholasticism are regrettably mentioned only in passing later in the volume (p. ). Lodone moves on to illustrate Biondo’s varied readership, drawing upon the priest’s own works and various other sources. Particularly interesting is his relationship with a young man named Giovanni; he was supposed to live with Biondo only temporarily, but, captivated by Biondo’s charisma, failed to return to his monastery . is section paves the way for Lodone’s discussion of Biondo’s doctrine, centred on the ideal of Franciscan poverty, which had been given a radical turn by Peter John Olivi and Angelo Clareno. e key proposition of Biondo’s doctrine is that self-reformation, which requires self-effacement, leads not to the pursuit of self-improvement but to the affirmation of obedience. is demands withdrawal from society and, if flight from the world is not sufficient, martyrdom. Obedience and self-emptying are the basis for a correct understanding of the two most dramatic events in Biondo’s life: his troubles with the ecclesiastical authorities and conflict with Savonarola and his followers. Despite the paucity of details concerning the trial, it seems that the accusations made against Biondo and his Ricordo by an ecclesiastical court presided over by the Patriarch of Venice and the Apostolic Nuncio were to do with the exterior aspects of faith, which he considered to be unnecessary and misleading. Biondo’s opposition to all external and institutionalized expressions of faith led to a process of internalization. From this point of view, his criticism of corrupt religious orders was not aimed at reforming them; rather, it was the very notion of a religious order that was unacceptable to him. e dialogues of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic with God, for instance, were a private matter, which should not lead to the formation of a congregation  Reviews of followers: a sequela Francisci or a sequela Dominici (a follower of Francis or of Dominic) should not replace a sequela Christi. Whereas Savonarola’s followers, the Piagnoni (Weepers), forcibly denounced and silenced any attempt to move away from the stringent rules that they had instituted, Biondo renounced all claims to leadership: there would be no Church of Gabriele Biondo, only a Church of Christ. Part  consists of editions of Biondo’s most significant writings: his treatise on meditation and its deceptions; the Commentarius (a Latin translation of his Ricordo); and a long letter, entitled De amore proprio (On self-love), written for the nun Alessandra degli Ariosti. ese texts are presented in chronological order, accompanied by helpful notes which shed light on obscure points. Each work is also preceded by an informative and readable introduction which offers a summary of its general theme. is editorial approach proves especially useful given the extraordinarily convoluted and oxymoronic style which Biondo...

D’Annunzio e l’edizione 1911 della ‘Commedia’ by Laura Melosi

 Reviews of followers: a sequela Francisci or a sequela Dominici (a follower of Francis or of Dominic) should not replace a sequela Christi. Whereas Savonarola’s followers, the Piagnoni (Weepers), forcibly denounced and silenced any attempt to move away from the stringent rules that they had instituted, Biondo renounced all claims to leadership: there would be no Church of Gabriele Biondo, only a Church of Christ. Part  consists of editions of Biondo’s most significant writings: his treatise on meditation and its deceptions; the Commentarius (a Latin translation of his Ricordo); and a long letter, entitled De amore proprio (On self-love), written for the nun Alessandra degli Ariosti. ese texts are presented in chronological order, accompanied by helpful notes which shed light on obscure points. Each work is also preceded by an informative and readable introduction which offers a summary of its general theme. is editorial approach proves especially useful given the extraordinarily convoluted and oxymoronic style which Biondo used to express the paradoxes and intricacies that are characteristic of a certain kind of Christian mysticism. e volume ends with an index of manuscripts, an index of names, a map of Italy highlighting the main locations in Biondo’s life, a family tree, and four illustrations from Biondo’s own manuscripts. In conclusion, Michele Lodone has succeeded in saving Gabriele Biondo from oblivion, while at the same time making a real advance in historical knowledge and inviting further research. W I V G D’Annunzio e l’edizione  della ‘Commedia’. By L M. (Biblioteca di bibliografia: Documents and Studies in Book and Library History, ) Florence: Olschki. . viii+ pp. €. ISBN ––––. Laura Melosi’s elegantly presented volume from the House of Olschki concerns a proposal to publish a prefatory essay by Gabriele d’Annunzio to accompany a resplendent edition of the Divine Comedy, eventually to be released with a publication date of . e proposed edition was enthusiastically backed by Leo Samuel Olschki, ambitious to convert his Florentine Libreria Antiquaria into a greater publishing enterprise which might reflect the printing tradition of his Prussian ancestors. e essential text of the Commedia had been prepared by the enthusiastic Dante scholar Count Giuseppe Lando Passerini, at the time director of Florence’s Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana and founding director of the Giornale Dantesco. Both men were eager to include d’Annunzio’s name in what was to be a brief preface to a Life of Dante that might accompany their proposed monumental edition of . All three men had connections in the pleasant territory around Bocca d’Arno, Marina di Pisa, and Vallombrosa. Olschki and Passerini were permanent local residents with established families. D’Annunzio, burdened with debt but never willing to pay his creditors, was also a regular, if at times fleeting, tenant at the Pisan resort. MLR, .,   Olschki had broached the Dante topic with d’Annunzio during a reception at the Saltin, his villa in Vallombrosa. One of Melosi’s many valuable finds is the note containing the invitation from Leo Olschki welcoming d’Annunzio to his ‘modest and humble house’, discovered in the Olschki archive in Florence. e poet accepted and, not untypically, brought along a guest of his own, Annibale Tenneroni, librarian of Rome’s Biblioteca Nazionale. At the Saltin there was evidently some discussion of a proposed new edition of the Divine Comedy. Over-optimistic leaks to the press wrongly implied d’Annunzio’s favourable inclination to the project, hinting too that Olschki was anxious to publish a biography of Dante. Some time aer that first meeting, Olschki and Passerini concocted a dra agreement which the publisher sent to d’Annunzio later in  (though with a wrongly pencilled, post-dated note of  October ). e proposal for the Dante edition would include a brief Life of Dante and  autograph signatures by d’Annunzio to encourage the sale of such authenticated copies of the work. For this the publisher offered  lire with a further  lire upon the successful conclusion of the contract. D’Annunzio replied aer a slight delay, thanking Olschki for his hospitality at the Saltin but making no mention of any supposed biography of Dante. It is worthwhile noting that Olschki, hoping to move...

Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain by Sol Miguel-Prendes

 Reviews period. Particularly striking is his reading of male disabled bodies as metaphors for national trauma in a range of contemporary documentaries. Pitassio thus adds important nuance to discussions of Italy’s failure to account for its Fascist past, and the central role within that of damaged masculinity as a trope. Finally, both authors devote a chapter to the key question of the non-professional actor, so central to neorealism. It is startling that so little attention has heretofore been devoted to the most human part of this ‘cinema of humanism’. Taken together, both chapters emphasize the frequent moralizing of the film press and concern about possible deprofessionalization that the non-professional might bring to the industry. ey also both point to the new sources of acting stardom that were excavated in the period, such as beauty contests, competitions, scouting on the street, and the world of sport. Pitassio draws upon his earlier work on promotional paratexts of neorealist film to show how posters and trailers engaged the ‘obvious materiality of nonprofessionals ’ (p. ). He also traces in detail the lineage of the non-professional through the influence of Soviet theory on inter-war Italian film culture. However, both scholars emphasize the way in which, despite the development of a new star system in Italy by the early s, and the gradual erasure of the non-professional actor, the widespread presence of the non-professional in cinema of the late s formed the basis for a new paradigm of ‘authentic’ stardom, which le its strongest commercial legacy in the fame of untrained female stars such as Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and Silvana Mangano. As I mentioned at the outset of this review, neorealism is frequently seen as a field that has been worked to exhaustion. Yet clearly when understood as a network of intersecting institutional, cultural, and artistic practices it is a terrain yet to be fully mined. While neither Pitassio nor Gundle claims to have resolved complex questions such as the slippage between ‘neorealism’ and a broader cultural field strongly marked by certain practices associated with films and directors who later came to be categorized as ‘neorealist’, they illustrate some of the directions for future scholarship to build upon. To switch metaphors, the ‘neorealist galaxy’ identi fied by Pitassio (p. ) suggestively encourages us to understand the period as one in which films, people, practices, technologies, and institutions are in constant but uncertain relation, and within which many future objects of study might yet be discovered. B U C O’R Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fieenth-Century Spain. By S M-P. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. . x+ pp. $. ISBN ––––. e existence and definition of a late medieval genre of ‘sentimental fiction’ in Iberia have been repeatedly contested. ere have been numerous discussions regarding which texts comprise the genre, while its purportedly unifying characteristics—e.g. MLR, .,   courtly love, pseudo-autobiography, metafiction, intertextuality, tragic endings— have failed to provide a definitive link between the texts in question. What scholars tend to agree on, however, is that there is something special about these works and that a common focus on internal psychology and subjectivity anticipates the modern novel. Against the backdrop of an unsatisfactory definition, Narrating Desire constitutes one of the most rigorously contextualized defences of the generic unity of sentimental fiction. For Sol Miguel-Prendes, its roots can be found in late medieval education and the rise of vernacular humanism, and it is the transformation of the scholastic canon that enables authors to innovate. Miguel-Prendes restricts the moniker of sentimental fiction to texts that distort or ‘contrafact’ the moral consolation, a literary mode inspired by Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. In doing so they naturally contain a plurality of discourses and thus multiple voices emerge, prefiguring the novel. Miguel-Prendes admirably explores a vast corpus of texts, considering canonical Castilian fictions such as Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor alongside less familiar Catalan works. In the Introduction, she redefines sentimental fiction by focusing on what it takes from penitential consolations and reworks, namely the Boethian dream vision. Penitential consolations and sentimental fictions can...

Reinar después de morir by Luis Vélez de Guevara

Reviewed by: Reinar después de morir by Luis Vélez de Guevara Esther Fernández REINAR DESPUÉS DE MORIR. By Luis Vélez de Guevara. Directed by Ignacio García and Pepa Pedroche. Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico/Companhia Teatro de Almada, Teatro de la Comedia, Madrid. January 10, 2020. Reference to a corpse queen triggers a call-back to Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated black comedy Corpse Bride (2005). Rather than revisiting the tale of Emily and her incorporeal consort, we may draw into focus a lesser known figure in the pantheon of the macabre, Inés de Castro (1325–55), whose historical execution has taken on a life of its own as a Portuguese legend that continues to resonate today. Prince Pedro of Portugal’s lover, Inés de Castro, was murdered by order of King Alonso, Pedro’s father, in the interest of safeguarding the state. As legend has it, upon assuming the throne in 1357, Don Pedro nevertheless declared Inés the queen of Portugal, exhumed her body, and forced his courtiers to swear allegiance to the corpse queen. Our penchant for the intricacies of forbidden love and the macabre have given this legend a rich afterlife on the stage since the eighteenth century. Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli’s and Giuseppe Persiani’s operas of 1798 and 1835, respectively, or plays such as Henry de Montherlant’s La reine morte (The dead queen, 1942) and Alejandro Casona’s Corona de amor y muerte (Crown of love and death, 1955) are proof of the story’s enduring popularity. However, Spanish playwright Luis Vélez de Guevara (1579–1644) first dramatized this tragedy in Reinar después de morir (To reign after death, c. 1635). Reinar después de morir clings to the elements that characterize the dramatic style of Vélez de Guevara. It is historically grounded; it has macabre elements; and its metaphors distil a complex, fantastic imaginary. Yet, Reinar, which is considered the most Portuguese of the Spanish early modern plays, also synthesizes Iberian culture. Many Spanish dramatic works of the time used Portuguese characters and themes (and vice versa), creating a rich cultural fluidity between the two countries. The Portuguese melancholic feeling of the saudade, which becomes concretized in the very geography of the play, is best captured in Reinar. If defining Portugalidade (being Portuguese) on the page is already difficult due to the slippery nature of the concept, capturing its meaning onstage and giving it a palpable form presents its own set of problems in our modern times. Nevertheless, the production directed by Ignacio García and Pepa Pedroche managed to deploy Portugalidade in all its grandeur and pathos. This culturally diverse and intricate background was exquisitely emphasized in the binational co-production between the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico and the Companhia Teatro de Almada that also premiered a few days earlier in Portugal, translated into Portuguese by Nuno Júdice and performed by Portuguese actors. From their seats, audience members were immersed in a multisensory experience where the romanticized Portugalidade became a social and poetic microcosm, functioning in the play as a Portuguese version of the Forest of Arden. Capitalizing on this theme, set designer José Manuel Castanheira, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s Ascent into the Empyrean (c.1480) and the dome of the Church of Our Lady of Mercy in Lisbon, designed a concave stage that allowed actors to slide between positions on set, mimicking the ease with which characters slide between the conflicting feelings of passion and duty—without realizing that they are trapped in a centrifugal tunnel. The constant pendular movement of the actors imbued the performance with Sisyphean fatigue, as the slow pace of saudade crept into the topsy-turvy world. [End Page 97] Click for larger view View full resolution Nurse (María José Alfonso), Blanca de Navarra (Manuela Velasco), and Inés de Castro (Lara Grube) (l-r) in Reinar después de morir. (Photo: Sergio Parra, courtesy of Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico.) [End Page 98] Click for larger view View full resolution Blanca de Navarra (Manuela Velasco), King Alonso (Chema de Miguel), Don Pedro (David...

PUBLIC VALUE THROUGH TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPED WITH OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA: THE LOVE SERENADE OPERATION CASE

ABSTRACT Purpose: To understand the public value that the website Operação Serenata de Amor [Love Serenade Operation], based on open government data, can generate for society. Originality/value: Researchers are investigating public value generation through digitally transformed public services, i.e., public value directly generated by the government. However, the literature needs a better understanding of this phenomenon through digital technologies, based on open public data, developed by non-governmental actors, such as the Operação Serenata de Amor website. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a qualitative approach to understand and describe the public value generated by Operação Serenata de Amor. The data were collected through citizen comments about the website’s initiatives on social media and in articles published on the internet. The data were analyzed through content analysis. Findings: The Operação Serenata de Amor generated public value by doing, facilitating, and stimulating social control. It was also identified that the site added value to society by increasing citizens’ ability to exercise social control. However, this work was limited to analyzing data collected on the internet. In future studies, researchers may collect data through interviews with citizens to understand, with more details, the public value generated by the website.

San Juan de la Cruz and the Cántico Espiritual

The predominant imagery of progress in western mystical writing usually describes some form of ascent. The Subida del monte Carmelo by San Juan de la Cruz certainly suggests the notion in Spanish mystical writing. While San Juan proffers ascent (subida) in the title of the commentary on “En una noche oscura,” the poem proper does not present a sense of verticality at all but, rather, an essentially horizontal passage from the “casa sosegada” to (re)union with the Lover in a static apotheosis described in the final strophes. Similarly, a paradoxical presentation of movement appears in the Cántico espiritual. This article considers San Juan’s use of verbs of movement, especially within the Cántico espiritual, as metaphors for the underlying mystical message he ascribes to his poem. It also demonstrates the presence of the same extended metaphor in other poems of his, including “En una noche oscura” and the “Llama de amor viva.

«Porque así lo permitió el Divino Maestro». Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios defiende las revelaciones a Teresa de Jesús, en conceptos de amor de Dios [1611

Conceptos de amor de Dios fue una obra publicada en 1611, en pleno proceso de beatificación de Teresa de Jesús, y por un cercano confesor: Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios. Este ex carmelita la editó fuera de España con el objetivo de revelar los comentarios e interpretaciones que hizo la monja al Cantar de los cantares, que por desgracia no se conservaron en su totalidad. Al mismo tiempo, el fraile aprovechaba el derecho de la monja a poner por escrito las revelaciones que Dios le había hecho, para no desobedecer al Divino Maestro, quien lo permitió para beneficio de las almas. Para este propósito, el religioso empleará el género demostrativo, centrado en particular, en la alegoría mística, tan cultivada en el Barroco.

Amor y guerra en la poesía de Jorge Manrique. Análisis del decir “Castillo de amor”

Courtly love poetry from the 15th century has currently become one of the main fields of study of Medieval literature. Among the most prominent authors in this field is Jorge Manrique, author of 26 lyrical dits, and highly known for the Coplas a la muerte de su padre. This investigation proposes the study of the amplificatio resources as a constitutive element of the construction of the love discourse. The loving qualities of the lyrical lover are emphasized in the “Castillo de amor” dit through the repetitive use of the collatio occulta and the prosopopoeia, amplificatio techniques defined by Godofredo de Vinsauf in Poetria Nova.