After thought. Devotion,Teresa de Jesús,and Miguel de Cervantes

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complex landscape of devotion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, comparing the legislated Christian-only history of Counter-Reformation with the various alternative strands of belief, faith, and devotion present in a variety of areas of cultural production. The article first examines representations of devotion—and methodologies of reading such representations—in areas of production such as architecture, dictionaries, literature, and the arts; at the end of this first section, it coins the concept of “After Thought” as a reading tool to better comprehend and possibly experience devotion in ways particular to early modern Spain, not merely en cristiano but in multiconfessional forms. “After Thought,” both the tool and the article, follow intellectual engagements with Andalusi (not merely Andalusian) past, present, and future environments in early modern Spain. They also engage alternative somatic dimensions of a different “entendimiento” of Christianity, as described by Teresa de Jesús and practiced by both her and Cervantes. Finally, in reviewing the six ducal chapters of the second part of Don Quijote as a rewriting of Castillo interior, the apocryphal condition of this segment of the novel mobilizes yet another wheel in the Trojan horse of fiction, one that exposes the way in which Cervantes refigures Teresa de Jesús, thus yielding two interactive models of “After Thought” in early modern Spain's arts, religion, and spirituality.     

Disruptive marginality: The representation of wildness in Lope de Vega’s Baroque dramatic art

Abstract

The theatrical production of Baroque Iberia exhibits an obsession with wildness that remains to be fully explored. By the time Segismundo takes the stage dressed in animal pelts in Calderón’s La vida es sueño, the wild figure had already enjoyed a long history on the Spanish stage, first appearing in Lope de Vega’s El nacimiento de Ursón y Valentín in 1588. Enduring popularity until Bances Candamo’s 1693 comedia, La piedra filosofal, this steady preoccupation with the concept of wildness offers unique insights on the evolving landscape of Baroque ideologies over time, which are rarely considered diachronically. Dramatic representations of wildness signify the transgression of a prescribed norm—be it social, political, racial, or otherwise—which leads to its necessary elimination to resolve the conflict of a given play. In this article, I will plot the trajectory of dramatic conventions in their diminishing ability to resolve the recurring problem of wildness, thus offering a literary history of the comedia’s social efficacy as it struggled to sustain the weight of its own ideological commitments. Furthermore, I will examine the implications of my approach on longstanding debates on the ideological function of Baroque Iberian drama by analyzing the theoretical problem inherent in the existence of the marginal terrain wildness inhabits. My approach considers who stands to benefit from social order and those who, like the wild figure, find themselves excluded. At a time of renewed energy for exclusionary ideologies, aspirations of encompassing the marginalized are as important today as they were in 1588.     

Representative Ideas of the Deathwish in Nineteenth-Century French Literature

The extensiveness of Alfonso X’s Libro del saber de astrología created such a challenge that only one of the nine subsequent, variant copies attempted to copy it in its entirety: Vatican Library, Ms. Vat. lat. 8174. None of them, including this one, however, contains all of the original text. It is the intricacy of design of the first treatise, the Libro de las figuras de las estrellas fijas que son en el ochavo cielo, however, that posed the greatest challenge for copyists. The Vatican copy and Ms. 1197 of the Biblioteca Nacional de España approximated the design of text of the constellation to the left with a wheel diagram of the various stars to the right as found in the original. The way that Ms. 9-28-8 5707 of the Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia negotiated this arrangement by using two conjugate folios, placing the star wheel diagram across the interior two pages and the text on the first and fourth page, which left a considerable amount of blank space that invited over the years several kinds of writings—tallies, signatures, memorias (a record of transactions), and billet doux (essentially, love messages sent via a go-between). The billet doux form the greatest literary interest given their date, their content, and the name of the male protagonist—Felisardo, which aligns them with Lope de Vega’s work called Novelas a Marcia Leonarda, and in particular the one titled La desdicha por la honra—published in 1624.     

Le Danger des liaisons: Censoring Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses

When Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses first appeared in late March 1782, it was an immediate succès de scandale. Laclos’s focus on his characters’ libertine psychology and his creation of a “monstrous” female villain, Merteuil, distinguished the novel from mainstream eighteenth-century French works. As an analysis of the novel’s reception demonstrates, Laclos’s suggestive portrayal of female sexuality and empowerment—and, specifically, of Merteuil—led first to the text’s association with dangerous works known as “mauvais livres” or “livres philosophiques” such as the Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1791) and the anonymous Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier de Chartreux (1741), and later contributed to its classification as a pornographic work at the time the concept was invented in the early nineteenth century—and, ultimately, to its censorship in 1823. If the novel was devoid of explicitly sexual scenes, it nonetheless elicited such images in the minds of (at least some of) its readers and thereby caught the attention of the authorities. Les Liaisons dangereuses may be one of the most prominent historical cases of a book being banned not for what was depicted in its pages, but for the fantasies it inspired—providing a compelling twist to the adage that “pornography is in the eyes of the beholder,” or the mind of the reader.     

Elasmosaurs (Sauropterygia,Plesiosauria) from the La Colonia Formation (Campanian–Maastrichtian), Argentina

O’Gorman, J.P., Salgado, L., Varela, J., & Parras, A., 2013. Elasmosaurs (Sauropterygia, Plesiosauria) from the La Colonia Formation (Campanian–Maastrichtian), Argentina. Alcheringa 37, 257–265. ISSN 0311-5518.

Elasmosaur postcranial remains from the La Colonia Formation (Campanian–Maastrichtian), Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina, are described. The new material has small dimensions and caudal vertebrae with parapophyses strongly projected laterally—characters shared with some Elasmosauridae indet. from the coeval Allen Formation, Río Negro Province, Argentina. These features reinforce the similarities between the plesiosaur faunas to the north and south of the Somún Curá Plateau. The small size of these elasmosaurs may be palaeoecologically related to the marginal marine depositional environment of the sedimentary host rocks.

José P. O’Gorman [joseogorman@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar], División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n., B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina and [CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas)]; Leonardo Salgado [salgadoleito@yahoo.com.ar], Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro, Isidro Lobo y Belgrano, 8332 General Roca, Argentina and [CONICET]; Julio Varela [julioadrianvarela@hotmail.com], and Ana Parras [aparras@exactas.unlpam.edu.ar], INCITAP (CONICET-UNLPam), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, Uruguay 151, 6300 Santa Rosa, La Pampa, Argentina. Received 27.7.2012; revised 19.10.2012; accepted 27.10.2012.     

Intertextual geopolitics and La Carte et le territoire: a cautionary tale for UNESCO and the repas gastronomique des Français?

ABSTRACT

La Carte et le territoire features a France in decline, saved, entre autres, by attracting foreign tourists with ‘heritagised’ French food. Eight days after the novel won the 2010 Prix Goncourt, the repas gastronomique des Français was inscribed on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list (ICH). Considering Houellebecq’s use of tropes of culinary heritage alongside the French ICH bid reveals parallels in their manipulation of culinary heritage to create globally marketable products. Yet the motivations and ramifications of the ‘gastrodiplomacy’ in the novel and in the French state’s arguably neo-imperialist initiative differ tellingly. Houellebecq’s novel brings into cautionary focus how responding to perceived geopolitical imperatives by creating narratives of cultural heritage can instead eradicate the conditions of renewal upon which it depends and limit cultural diversity. The instrumentalisation of food heritage by a global corporation, national government and UNESCO—an ostensibly benign supranational institution—risks creating new conditions of global competition. However, comparing the novel and the narratives surrounding the repas gastronomique des Français nonetheless suggests that representations of food—like language—can exceed authorial intention, and the gastronomic miscegenation that is strategically missing from Houellebecq’s novel and elided in the ICH bid may yet continue to feed French food heritage.     

Lo que le sucedió a María Zambrano: Dulcinea

Don Quijote is constantly present in María Zambrano’s works, especially in the years of exile. Along her career, Zambrano wrote many essays about Cervantes, in which she reflects on love, always about the character of Dulcinea. One of these essays, significantly titled “Lo que le sucedió a Cervantes: Dulcinea,” raises the lack of love as the most important topic in Quijote, and discusses from this point of view the ideal image of Dulcinea contradicted by the carnal Aldonza.     

María Zambrano’s and Albert Camus’s communal ethics

ABSTRACT

Maria Zambrano and Albert Camus had much in common, especially their sympathy for the Second Spanish Republic and their ethical vision. Both intellectuals employed literary forms to explore philosophical ideas allegorically, explicitly notions related to exile and solitude. Works included in the study are ‘Delirio de Antigone,’ La tumba de Antigone, and Delirio y destino [Delirum and Destiny] by Zambrano and The Plague and The Myth of Sysifus by Camus. Zambrano’s works are interpreted as allegories of Franco’s Spain, while Camus’s novel and essay represent Vichy France under the Nazis. Like Camus, Zambrano was a master of blending political, philosophical, and literary themes and genres.     

Practical Hagiography: James of Voragine’s Sermones and Vita on St Margaret of Antioch

Abstract

In addition to his exceedingly popular Legenda Aurea, James of Voragine wrote in another hagiographical genre: sermons on the saints. The Sermones de sanctis likewise became immediately popular, as his Dominican brothers used James’s model sermons to learn to preach about the saints in a format that would provide the laity with intelligible and practical theological instruction. James’s corpus gives us a rather unusual opportunity to compare the ways in which a single author manipulates multiple hagiographical genres, and his writings on St Margaret of Antioch allow us to explore how a medieval preacher used a historically disputed saint — a dragon-fighter — to provide a practical model of sanctity to his lay audience. I compare the representations of Margaret in James’s sermones and vita, arguing that James adapted certain features of Margaret’s saintly example in the vita to instruct the audience of his sermons about proper Christian virtues and actions. As a point of comparison, I explore a sermon by Évrard of Val des Écoliers in which the Augustinian teaches his audience a practical skill — how to pray — through Margaret’s example.     

Historic and symbolic violence in the Romani Fuenteovejuna by TNT-El Vacie: Gender,ethnicity, and interculturalism

Abstract

I address here the performance of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna undertaken by TNT-El Vacie, giving particular consideration to the ways in which Antonio Álamo’s adaptation, Pepa Gamboa’s direction, and the staging of El Vacie, a company composed exclusively of Roma women, constitute a site of resistance as well as a performance of gender, identity, and place. From this vantage point, I wrestle with issues of agency, dialogism, and intercultural communication to make sense of ontological as well as hermeneutic aspects of the performance text: deletions and additions; orality and authority; meta-theatricality and self-reflexivity; acting and becoming. In addition, I bring to bear the fact that the name of the company, El Vacie, bears witness to the impoverished settlement or shantytown where the women reside, which stands within a mere two hundred yards of the theater where the play is performed. The name of the company signals the identification of the actresses with the marginal space in which they live, enriches the text, and further complicates their reading of Fuenteovejuna by adding levels of referentiality and indexicality that redefine boundaries as well as processes of exclusion and inclusion. While this is not the first collaboration between TNT and El Vacie—it was preceded by the successful and award-winning 2009 staging of La Casa de Bernarda Alba—I consider this performance a particularly important contribution to the construction of a historicized cultural politics of identity that makes the Romani community visible by positioning the women of El Vacie center stage as participants, creators, and interpreters of the national cultural patrimony. Through this cultural intervention, certain spaces and markers of the Roma community acquire visibility as they get inserted into a national historical discourse from which they previously had been historically excluded.     

Matéo Maximoff's La Septième fille: A Roma Testimony of Internment and Assimilation

Set in the internment camp at Lannemezan where the author and his family spent two years, Matéo Maximoff's La Septième fille gives a voice to a minority group that has suffered from negative stereotypes since its arrival in France in the Middle Ages. In that work, Maximoff, the first authentic Roma novelist, blends folklore and oral tradition with historical fact, chronicling the conditions in the camp at Lannemezan even as he spins a supernatural tale worthy of the most gifted of conteurs. Informed by historical sources and ethnographic studies, this article suggests that La Septième fille may be read as a metaphor for the internment of the Roma by the Vichy regime and the policies aimed at ‘socialising’ and forcing them to become sedentary, policies that began during the Third Republic and that continued well into the twentieth century. La Septième fille is one of the rare literary works (along with Didier Daeninckx's La Route du Rom, 2003) to treat the little-known Vichy initiative of interning Roma—the majority of whom were French citizens—in 31 camps around France.     

Universal,acid: Houellebecq’s clones and the evolution of humanity

ABSTRACT

This article examines Houellebecq’s two genomics novels, Les Particules élémentaires and La Possibilité d’une île and elaborates their relationship with Neo-Darwinian evolutionary naturalism and neoliberal capitalism. In these works, the mutual interdependence of these two regimes of thought both necessitates and makes possible the technology of human cloning, which promises humanity an escape from the misery of its own biological, political predicament. Houellebecq’s work, I show, problematises this dialectic, and in doing so offers an incisive critique of utopian posthumanism, providing instead only an aporetic—but rigorously materialist—form of hope.     

Palaeoenvironmental implications of the giant crocodylian Mourasuchus (Alligatoridae,Caimaninae) in the Yecua Formation (late Miocene) of Bolivia

Tineo, D.E., Bona, P., Pérez, L.M., Vergani, G.D., González, G., Poiré, D.G., Gasparini, Z.N. & Legarreta, P., 1.10.2014. Palaeoenvironmental implications of the giant crocodylian Mourasuchus (Alligatoridae, Caimaninae) in the Yecua Formation (late Miocene) of Bolivia. Alcheringa 39, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

Outcrops of the Yecua Formation (late Miocene) are exposed for approximately 230 m along the La Angostura section of the Piraí River (50 km southwest of Santa Cruz de la Sierra). These reveal massive (argillic palaeosols) and laminated (quiet-water lacustrine and marsh settings) mudstones interbedded with thin sandstones containing microfossils, molluscs and vertebrate remains. Significantly, the succession hosts a giant crocodylian, Mourasuchus (Alligatoridae, Caimaninae), which is represented by both skull and postcranial fragments found in association with freshwater turtles and fishes. Mourasuchus was distributed widely from the middle Miocene of Colombia to upper Miocene of Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, suggesting connections between major fluvial systems and an active mechanism for dispersal of South American freshwater vertebrates during the Miocene.

David Eric Tineo [tineo.d.e@gmail.com] and Daniel Gustavo Poiré [dgpoire@yahoo.com.ar], CONICET—Centro de Investigaciones Geológicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Calle 1 (644), B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina; Paula Bona [paulabona26@gmail.com] and Zulma Gasparini [zgaspari@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar], CONICET—División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata. Paseo del Bosque s/n, B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina; Leandro Martín Pérez [pilosaperez@gmail.com] CONICET—División Paleozoología Invertebrados, Museo de La Plata. Paseo del Bosque s/n, B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina; Gustavo Dardo Vergani [gvergani@pluspetrol.net]—Pluspetrol S.A. Lima (339), C1073AAG, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Gloria González Rigas [ggonzalez@pluspetrol.net]—Pluspetrol Bolivia Corporation SA, Av. Grigotá esq. Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia; Pablo Legarreta [plegarreta@pluspetrol.net]—Pluspetrol S.A. Lima (339), C1073AAG, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.     

A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids

O’Gorman, J.P. & Coria, R.A. September 2016. A new elasmosaurid specimen from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica: new evidence of a monophyletic group of Weddellian elasmosaurids. Alcheringa 41, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

A new fossil elasmosaurid specimen, MLP 15-I-7-48, from the upper Maastrichtian Sandwich Bluff Member of the López de Bertodano Formation, Vega Island, Archipelago James Ross, Antarctica, is described. The fossil is a well-preserved anterior limb, which shares with Vegasaurus molyi from the upper Maastrichtian of Antarctica, a concave to flat anterior margin of the humeral shaft, and with Vegasaurus molyi and Aphrosaurus furlongi from the upper Maastrichtian of California, a well-defined depression on the anterior margin of the ventral surface of the humeral shaft. A phylogenetic analysis recovered MLP 15-I-7–48 as sister group of the lower Maastrichtian Vegasaurus molyi within a new clade nominated as Weddellonectia: Kawanectes lafquenianum ((Vegasaurus molyi; MLP 15-I-7–48) (Morenosaurus stocki (Aristonectinae))). This indicates that the previously proposed faunal turnover between the early and late Maastrichtian Weddellian marine reptile fauna, did not severely affect the non-aristonectine elasmosaurids. Additionally, other taxa previously considered evidence of a faunal turnover are re-evaluated.

José P. O’Gorman. [joseogorman@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar]. División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n., B1900FWA, La Plata, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina. Rodolfo A. Coria. [rcoria@unrn.edu.ar]. Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro—Subsecretaría de Cultura de Neuquén—Museo Carmen Funes, Av. CVórdoba 55 (8318), Plaza Huincul, Neuquén, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina.     

Montesquieu's anti-Machiavellian Machiavellianism

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, mentions Niccolò Machiavelli by name in his extant works just a handful of times. That, however, he read him carefully and thoroughly time and again there can be no doubt, and it is also clear that he couches his argument both in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and in his Spirit of Laws as an appropriation and critique of the work of the predecessor whom he termed ‘this great man’. In this paper I explore the manner in which the Frenchman redeployed the arguments advanced by the Florentine for the purpose of refuting the latter's conclusions.     

Los Memoriales de don Juan Ortiz de Cervantes y la cuestión de la perpetuidad de las encomiendas en el Perú (siglo XVII)

Mientras que generalmente las encomiendas han sido descritas como depredadoras de la realidad socio-económica del mundo andino, este artículo insiste en la necesidad de estudiarlas desde un ángulo socio-político y religioso. Para ello analizamos el Memorial (Madrid, 1619) que el licenciado Juan Ortiz de Cervantes escribió al Consejo de Indias por el que solicitaba que las dos terceras partes de las encomiendas se perpetuasen en los hijos y descendientes de los beneficiados, y la otra parte se encomendase por una sola vida. Se trataba del primero de una serie de tres Informes o Memoriales (Madrid, 1620; 1621) que se articulaban con las propuestas de los jesuitas peruanos para la reforma y conservación de los pueblos andinos del seiscientos. Pero además, dicha conservación pasaba por resituar al encomendero en un modelo de organización social que garantizara un ordenamiento político interno en defensa del bien común.     

Sword,Priest and Conversion: On Religion and Apostasy in South Slav Literature in the Period of National Revival

Abstract

This article examines the works of four writers of Croatian, Slovene, Serbian and Bosniak literature in the period of National Revival, in their literary, historical and discursive contexts: Pre?ern’s Krst pri Savici, Ma?urani?’s Smrt Smail-age ?engi?a, Njego?’s Gorski vijenac and Ba?agi?’s Abdullah Pa?a. Three of the four authors were also statesmen, and all four are considered canonical national writers. There is a striking similarity between their otherwise different works, resulting from speeches by priests who either demand and justify conversion, or vehemently oppose it and call for vengeance. In all four works, the enemy is not a foreign conqueror, but an apostate who sides with the conqueror by accepting his faith. Although in all four works the values of the epic and heroic world are pronounced dead, epic action — a ’sword’ — is still very much alive. Though the central act of conversion is accompanied by religious symbolism which gives rise to the impression of a clash of religions, in all four works conversion does not have a religious meaning, it is purely political.     

La Quintrala's Confessions: The Contesting of Female Agency and Indigeneity in Two Popular Chilean Visual Narratives

Doña Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, known as ‘La Quintrala,’ a seventeenth-century aristocratic woman of mixed ancestry accused of torture, witchcraft, and murder, has persisted as a recurring figure in the Chilean imaginary. While literary representations of this figure have been well explored, this article contributes an examination of two visual narratives, paying particular attention to the manner in which genre and context influence the repurposing of this violent woman: the 1986 teleserie La Quintrala, produced by Chile's state-owned television station (TVN), and the Chilean newspaper Las últimas noticias's 2008 comic ‘La Quintrala y el Cristo de Mayo.’ The teleserie, a product of the Pinochet era, positions her as an antithesis to the ideal Chilean woman, simultaneously denying her agency and condemning her. The comic echoes the rhetoric of the Concertación governments as it prominently links La Quintrala's downfall and redemption to the genesis of modern Chile at the cost of her distinctive racial and gendered characteristics. Ultimately, each work employs the structure of confession to recall her crimes while rejecting the female agency and racially mixed heritage La Quintrala represents.