Reviewed by: The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora by Felipe Valencia Andrés Olmedo Orejuela Felipe Valencia, The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 335 pp. Lope de Vega (1562–1635), dramatic innovator, prolific poet, author of multiple epics, began a great controversy toward the end of his phenomenally productive career. Criticizing the style of poetry popularized by Luis de Góngora's Soledades (1613–17), Lope ridiculed it in one of the most extended and extraordinary contemplations on poetry in the early modern period. Lope had seen the writing on the wall: soon enough Góngora's imitators were legion, and in his final dramatic work, La Dorotea (1632), Lope himself imitates "the new poetry" in such poems as "A mis soledades voy" and "¡Pobre barquilla mía…!" Contrary to this longstanding crisis in the historiography of Spanish literature, Felipe Valencia's erudite and provocative The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora tells another story that places Góngora not at the height of stylistic or poetic achievement, but at the crux of a quarrelsome literary competition between prestigious epic and lyric poetry, for which "melancholy is central" (19). Two main observations emerge: first, that the success of epic poetry swayed Spanish writers of lyric in the second half of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including Alonso de Ercilla, Fernando de Herrera, Miguel de Cervantes, Juan de Arguijo, and Góngora; and second, that theories of melancholy define lyric poetry as masculine by representing erotic love as an illness that exalts the violent and creative capacities of melancholic men who fail to consummate their erotic longings. Valencia's monograph is a first-rate contribution to the study of early modern lyric poetry, especially as it developed in Spain. This study builds upon important works in the field—Leah Middlebrook's Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain (2009) and Isabel Torres's Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age: Eros, Eris and Empire (2013)—through a novel emphasis on the relationship between epic and lyric, and an examination of the influence of melancholy. Valencia deploys a range of critical approaches, grounding close readings in philology, elucidating cultural developments in medicine, and explicating theories of lyric with clear references to critical theory and historical treatises. The theoretical arguments can be difficult, but specialists and non-specialists alike will discover in this monograph deft discussions of melancholy across historical periods, the development of ancient and modern theories of lyric, and the reception of the classics during the Renaissance. The Melancholy Void consists of an introduction and five chapters. Each chapter is divided into sections that separate its historical, ideological, and theoretical components. The introduction establishes the connection between the arrival of Italianate poetic forms in Spain and accusations of lyric effeminacy. Representations of "the suffering of a beautiful woman"—such as Daphne in Garcilaso de la Vega's sonnet "A Dafne ya los brazos le crecían" (1533) or Dido in his imperial sonnet "Boscán, las armas y el furor de Marte" (1535)—respond to accusations of lyric effeminacy by displaying the creative and violent power of the melancholic and masculine poetic speaker, shifting the focus of the poem [End Page 282] from the experience of the suffering woman to that of the suffering male. Valencia contends that silenced feminine voices, the perspectives of mythical heroes such as Apollo and Orpheus, and the "spoilation of symbolic practices traditionally associated with women and femininity" are masculinist practices through which male artistic prowess is shown (40), transforming women's suffering into great art and tending "to derive aesthetic pleasure from spectacles of female suffering" (14). The masculine speakers of the poems appear as frustrated melancholic lovers. Valencia traces their connection to the gendered theories of melancholy that attribute creativity and violence to frustrated male lovers in works by Marsilio Ficino (1433–99), Alonso de Santa Cruz (d. 1576), Juan Huarte de San Juan (1529–88), and others. Valencia charts the development of this "melancholy and masculinist poetics" (53). Alonso de Ercilla's epic, La Araucana...
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Jul 30, 2024
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Open Access