The Roman poet Ovid, author of the famous Metamorphoses, is widely considered one of the canonical poets of Latin antiquity. Vastly popular in Europe during the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, Ovid's writings influenced the literature, art, and culture in Spain's Golden Age. The book begins with examinations of the translation and utilization of Ovid's texts from the Middle Ages to the Age of Cervantes. The work includes a section devoted to the influence of Ovid on Cervantes, arguing that Don Quixote is a deeply Ovidian text, drawing upon many classical myths and themes. The contributors then turn to specific myths in Ovid as they were absorbed and transformed by different writers, including that of Echo and Narcissus in Garcilaso de la Vega and Hermaphroditus in Covarrubias and Moya. The final section of the book centers on questions of poetic fame and self-fashioning. Ovid in the Age of Cervantes is an important and comprehensive re-evaluation of Ovid's impact on Renaissance and Early Modern Spain.
The Roman poet Ovid, author of the famous Metamorphoses, is widely considered one of the canonical poets of Latin antiquity. Vastly popular in Europe during the Renaissance and Early Modern periods, Ovid's writings influenced the literature, art, and culture in Spain's Golden Age. The book begins with examinations of the translation and utilization of Ovid's texts from the Middle Ages to the Age of Cervantes. The work includes a section devoted to the influence of Ovid on Cervantes, arguing that Don Quixote is a deeply Ovidian text, drawing upon many classical myths and themes. The contributors then turn to specific myths in Ovid as they were absorbed and transformed by different writers, including that of Echo and Narcissus in Garcilaso de la Vega and Hermaphroditus in Covarrubias and Moya. The final section of the book centers on questions of poetic fame and self-fashioning. Ovid in the Age of Cervantes is an important and comprehensive re-evaluation of Ovid's impact on Renaissance and Early Modern Spain.
A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid presents more than 30original essays written by leading scholars revealing the richdiversity of critical engagement with Ovid’s poetry thatspans the Western tradition from antiquity to the presentday. Offers innovative perspectives on Ovid’s poetry and itsreception from antiquity to the present day Features contributions from more than 30 leading scholars inthe Humanities. Introduces familiar and unfamiliar figures in the history ofOvidian reception. Demonstrates the enduring and transformative power ofOvid’s poetry into modern times.
Milton and the Metamorphosis of Ovid contributes to our understanding of the Roman poet Ovid, the Renaissance writer Milton, and more broadly the transmission and transformation of classical traditions through history. It examines the ways in which Milton drew on Ovid's oeuvre, as well as the long tradition of reception that had begun with Ovid himself, and argues that Ovid's revision of the past, and especially his relation to Virgil, gave Renaissance writers a model for their own transformation of classical works. Throughout his career Milton thinks through and with Ovid, whose stories and figures inform his exploration of the limits and possibilities of creativity, change, and freedom. Examining this specific relation between two very individual and different authors, Kilgour also explores the forms and meaning of creative imitation. Intertextuality was not only central to the two writers' poetic practices but helped shape their visions of the world. While many critics seek to establish how Milton read Ovid, Kilgour debates the broader question of why does considering how Milton read Ovid matter? How do our readings of this relation change our understanding of both Milton and Ovid; and does it tell us about how traditions are changed and remade through time?
The fictional Don Quixote was constantly defeated in his knightly adventures. In writing Quixote's story, however, Miguel Cervantes succeeded in a different kind of quest — the creation of a modern novel that ‘conquers’ and assimilates countless literary genres. /spanDon Quixote among the Saracens considers how Cervantes's work reflects the clash of civilizations and anxieties towards cultural pluralism that permeated Golden Age Spain. Frederick A. de Armas unravels an essential mystery of one of world literature's best known figures: why Quixote sets out to revive knight errantry, and why he comes to feel at home only among the Moorish ‘Saracens,’ a people whom Quixote feared at the beginning of the novel. De Armas also reveals Quixote's inner conflicts as both a Christian who vows to battle the infidel, but also a secret Saracen sympathizer. While delving into genre theory, Don Quixote among the Saracens adds a new dimension to our understandings of Spain's multicultural history.
A Tale Blazed Through Heaven examines developments in the representation of the classical tale of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan in the literature and painting of the Golden Age of Spain (c.1526-1681). Anchored in close analysis of individual primary texts, the five chapters that comprise this study assess how poets and painters breathed new life into the tale inherited from Homer, Ovid, and others, examining some of the ways in which the story of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan was disguised, developed, expanded, mocked, combined with or played off against different subjects, or otherwise modified in order to pique the interest of successive generations of readers and viewers. Each chapter discusses what particular changes and shifts in emphasis reveal about the tale itself, specific renderings, the aims and intentions of individual poets and painters, and the wider context of the literary and visual culture of Early Modern Spain. Discussing a range of poems by both canonical (Garcilaso de la Vega, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, etc.) and less well-known writers (Juan de la Cueva, Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, Salvador Jacinto Polo de Medina, etc.), and culminating in detailed examination of select mythological works by Philip IV's court painter, Diego Velázquez, this book sheds light on questions relating to aspects of classical reception in the Renaissance, the rise of specific poetic styles (epic, mock-epic, burlesque, etc.), the interplay between the sister arts of poetry and painting, and the continual process of imitation and invention that was one of the defining features of the Spanish Golden Age.
This study provides a new analysis of the pictorial ensemble of the Torre de la Parada, the hunting lodge of King Philip IV of Spain. Created in the late 1630s by a group of artists led by Peter Paul Rubens, this cycle of mythological imagery and hunting scenes was completed by Diego Vel?uez. Despite the lack of a written program, surviving works provide eloquent testimony of several basic themes that embody Neostoic ideals of self-restraint and prudent governance. While Rubens set the moral tone through his serio-comic Ovidian narratives, Vel?uez added an important grace note with his portraits of ancient philosophers, and royals and fools of the court. This study is the first to consider in depth their joint artistic contributions and shared ambition. Through analysis of individual works, the authors situate these pictorial inventions within broader intellectual currents in both Spanish Flanders and Spain, especially in the advice literature and drama presented to the Spanish king. Moreover, they point to the lasting resonance of Torre de la Parada for Vel?uez, especially within his late masterworks, Las Meninas and Las Hilanderas. Ultimately, this study illuminates the dialogical nature of this ensemble in which Rubens and Vel?uez offer a set of complementary views on subjects ranging from the nature of classical gods to the role of art as a mirror of the prince.
The Signifying Self: Cervantine Drama as Counter-Perspective Aesthetic offers a comprehensive analysis of all eight of Cervantes's Ocho comedias (published 1615), moving beyond conventional anti-Lope approaches to Cervantine dramatic practise in order to identify what, indeed, his theatre promotes. Considered on its own aesthetic terms, but also taking into account ontological and socio-cultural concerns, this study compels a re-assessment of Cervantes's drama and conflates any monolithic interpretations which do not allow for the textual interplay of contradictory and conflicting discourses which inform it. Cervantes's complex and polyvalent representation of freedom underpins such an approach; a concept which is considered to be a leitmotif of Cervantes's work but which has received scant attention with regards to his theatre. Investigation of this topic reveals not only Cervantes's rejection of established theatrical convention, but his preoccupation with the difficult relationship between the individual and the early modern Spanish world. Cervantes's comedias emerge as a counter-perspective to dominant contemporary Spanish ideologies and more orthodox artistic imaginings. Ultimately, The Signifying Self seeks to recuperate the Ocho comedias as a significant part of the Cervantine, and Golden-Age, canon and will be of interest and benefit to those scholars who work on Cervantes and indeed on early modern Spanish theatre in general.
Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World consists of ten chapters that examine the representation of political, economic, military and symbolic power both in Spain and the New World under the Habsburgs.
Shakespeare and the Spanish Comedia examines masterpieces of early modern English and Spanish theater with attention to issues of transculturation, translation, interpretation and performance. This collection of essays by highly respected British and American scholars and theater practitioners offers a unique transnational view of two great dramatic traditions in the social contexts in which they were originally created and in which they are presently viewed.
In June 2012, scholars from a number of disciplines and countries gathered in Stockholm to discuss the representation of ancient mythology in Renaissance Europe. This symposium was an opportunity for the participants to cross disciplinary borders and to problematize a well-researched field. The aim was to move beyond a view of mythology as mere propaganda in order to promote an understanding of ancient tales and fables as contemporary means to explain and comprehend the Early Modern world. W ...
