486 Reviews providence, free will, predestination, and the evils of society and of the individual. The introduction concludes with a brief analysis of the poetic tradition and meaning of the poem, which, among other questions, considers the Rimado's relationship to earlier cuaderna via poetry. In this section Salvador Martinez comments in particular on the initial invocation, the function of metre, and on specific innovations such as the blending oftraditional exempla with materials drawn frommore contemporary events. The edition itself is based on a reading of MS N with corrections drawn from E, and occasionally C and P (the Paris fragment is edited separately as an appendix). The editor's stated aim is to offera clear and precise edition of the text without cramping the edition with copious number s of critical notes or confusing the reader with archaic spellings such as Rroma and Rrocamador. In this respect, the letters 'i', 'j', V, and 'u' are adjusted to their modern equivalents while the adverb of place is rendered 'i'. This type of regularization will not please all readers ofthe poem, but the editor must be credited with realizing the aim of prioritizing clarity over authenticity. The edition also contains a short, four-page bibliography and an extensive index of notes that greatly facilitates the search for individual passages. With the exception of a number of minor typographic blemishes and misspellings ('oir', 'descuertizar', 'nanuscritos', forexample), the book is well formatted and is written in a lively and entertaining style that will no doubt make it a mainstay of Rimado scholarship formany years to come. University of Durham Andrew M. Beresford Echoes and Inscriptions: Comparative Approaches toEarly Modern Spanish Literatures. Ed. by Barbara A. Simerka and Christopher B. Weimer. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2000. 272 pp. ?35. ISBN 0-8387-5430-9. Walter Cohen's strikinglyoppositional keynote essay sets the tone forthis stimulating and welcome collection of sixteen essays by academies in the United States, which aim to explore hitherto unrecognized connections between Spanish Golden Age texts and cultural productions of other places and eras, as well as to resuscitate and resignify Iberian Renaissance and Baroque writings and draw attention to the little-appreciated influence of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish works on Western culture. The book is divided into four sections, within which each essay has its own detailed notes and list of works cited, with information on the contributors and a full index at the end. In Part 1, 'The Politics of Discourse', Cohen tackles the familiar view of Spain's cultural uniqueness head on, seeking to reposition Spanish writing more assertively within the history of European literature. He discusses Golden Age letters in relation to the European novel, European global expansion, and the European confrontation with Islam, arguing that eighteenth-century English fiction derives from that of the Spanish Golden Age. His paradoxical conclusion asserts Spain's unique influence upon the formation of the European novel. Its creation of 'a multi-dimensional ac? count of early modern European imperialism, uniquely influenced by Semitic culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance' (p. 28) perversely transmutes Spanish Go ien Age literature into the most typical literature in Europe, akin, he claims, to thf way that Sterne's Tristram Shandy is, in its extremism, the most typical novel of all be? cause it reveals the essence of the category to which it belongs. Part 2, 'Textual Stategies', contains six essays, two of which draw on the work of Maria de Zayas. Margaret Greer considers de Zayas's use of the frame tale in her two volumes of stories, comparing it with similar frames in an eighth-century Indian collection of tales, Boccaccio's Decameron, and a Hollywood film, The Princess Bride. MLRy 98.2, 2003 487 While each shares structural elements and motifs, Maria de Zayas uses the frame tale in order to enhance the power of the narrative to transcend and persuade. Amy Williamsen also turns to de Zayas, examining the links between her use of humour and that of the Mexican poet Rosario Castellanos, to show that humour can 'recast inherited forms of expression and understanding by challenging culturally transmitted myths' (p. 56). Salvador Oropesa writes...
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Mar 15, 2023
Leandro Solmi + 6
Open Access
