Robert Folger | Universität Heidelberg (original) (raw)
Books by Robert Folger
Colonial Spanish bureaucracy produced masses of 'autobiographical' texts (relaciones de méritos a... more Colonial Spanish bureaucracy produced masses of 'autobiographical' texts (relaciones de méritos and servicios) which forced/invited individuals to present themselves as perfect subjects of the King in order to be rewarded. Bureaucracy produced the officials of the colonial regime, and, at the same time, it provided individuals with the possibility of exploring the literary potential of writing one's curriculum vitae. This book helps contextualize a body of often-used yet understudied historic sources; it indicates that the fabric of early modern society was held together by a pervasive economy of mercedes (rewards); and it shows that the tension between state-induced production of autobiographical documents and the individual's endeavor to outsmart this system is at the origin of modern forms of literature
This is an exploration of medieval modes of subject constitution and their transformation in 15th... more This is an exploration of medieval modes of subject constitution and their transformation in 15th-century Spanish sentimental romance, with a particular focus on Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor. Drawing on premodern psychological models, it argues that courtly self-fashioning through amatory performance provided an alternative and threat to the medieval gradual build-up of the self through hexis and habitus. In the light of the unsettling gender implications for the courtly lover, the authors of sentimental fiction explored new ways of subject constitution based not on passionate attachment but on identification. Cárcel de amor shows how new forms of writing and reading techniques and authorship provided an avenue for a new notion of interiority that would be constitutive for the Golden Age of Spanish literature.
This book is a reading of the first picaresque novel, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fo... more This book is a reading of the first picaresque novel, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fortunas y adversidades, against the backdrop of the contemporary "economy of mercedes." An astoundingly complex bureaucratic system produced a large body of "autobiographical" texts, known as relaciones de méritos y servicios, in which the insignificant subject produced a record of his services to the King. Lazarillo is a service record of its own kind. Lázaro is interpellated by Vuestra Merced, a stand-in for the sovereign. He is invited to a phantasmatic identification with authoritative and authorized images. However, he uses the tactical blind spot of strategic assujettissement as his place whence to assume his own voice and fashion himself. Lázaro tries to dupe the Archive and supplement the void in the register of authority with his own discourse.
Hallándose la descolonización en América ante el problema de no poder ser recuperación de un pasa... more Hallándose la descolonización en América ante el problema de no poder ser recuperación de un pasado precolonial, tampoco puede prescindir de las estructuras y jerarquías coloniales, entre ellas, la lengua castellana. A esto se suma que los estados postcoloniales fueron entes políticos antes de lograr una clara autodefinición De ahí que las prácticas simbólicas, tales como la prensa y la literatura, desempeñaron un papel clave en la constitución de estas comunidades postcoloniales. Sin embargo, esta literatura no puede funcionar de una manera simple y unívoca: lo que sería lo propio –la cultura española, el indígena, el negro y “la chusma”– a menudo juega el papel del otro, mientras que el otro –la cultura francesa, anglosajona y, en el caso de Martí, también la estadounidense– funciona como instancia de identificación. Así nos encontramos ante dos fenómenos estudiados extensivamente en la teoría postcolonial –el othering y la mimicry–, que son los que constituyen, a menudo de una manera aporética, la escritura de la independencia
Scholarship has celebrated Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas as a forerunner of ... more Scholarship has celebrated Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas as a forerunner of modern biography and as a sober piece of trustworthy historiography. Silhouetting the text against medieval horizons of expectations, Robert Folger argues that semblanzas take the shape of blueprints for the formation of mnemonic images. He traces the intricate intertextual web with the nodal point Generaciones, reconstructing the dominant pragmatic orientation toward preserving aristocratic memory. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of Generaciones, Folger pinpoints the emergence of semblanzas in the earliest testimonies of vernacular Iberian historiography and follows their evolution until the end of the 15th century
Spanish 15th-century sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangl... more Spanish 15th-century sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangled, faded readings, a challenge to the reader. While the parameters of writing sentimental fiction and its textuality have been explored with great success, reading and readers have been largely neglected.
Based on a reconstruction of the medical notion of love-as-sickness (amor hereos), premodern reading habits, and interpretive strategies, this book approaches canonical works of sentimental romance from the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader. An analysis of Don Quijote silhouetted against the subtext of sentimental romance indicates how faculty psychology and lovesickness resonate in Golden Age literature.
La historiografía indiana, la fuente más importante para conocer la realidad de las colonias espa... more La historiografía indiana, la fuente más importante para conocer la realidad de las colonias españolas en América y de las culturas precolombinas, está constituida por textos procedentes de los más diversos contextos pragmáticos: la legislación, la administración, la Iglesia (con sus órdenes religiosas y su labor misionera), el humanismo y el mundo indígena. Tanto en la colonia como en España, estos textos crean y preservan -en ocasiones destruyen- un pasado complejo; son herramientas y vehículos de memoria. Al estudiarlos desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria como la de los trabajos aquí reunidos, emergen las luchas y las reivindicaciones de 'contra-memorias' y se pone de manifiesto el carácter múltiple y conflictivo del proceso hacia la autorización del saber histórico
Papers by Robert Folger
El ejemplo de El astrologo fingido de Calderon de la Barca demuestra que la reconstruccion propues... more El ejemplo de El astrologo fingido de Calderon de la Barca demuestra que la reconstruccion propuesta por Anthony Close de la mentalidad comica colectiva del tiempo de Cervantes puede servir como marco apropiado para entender la comicidad en el teatro de comedias con-temporaneo. La teoria del filosofo frances Henri Bergson sobre la risa aclara otras facetas de lo comico en el teatro. Sobre todo en los aspectos metateatrales de El astrologo fingido , observamos la rigidez mecanica bergsoniana que caracteriza los papeles teatrales, produciendo en los espectadores un alivio comico en las normas de conducta y papeles sociales que experimentan en su vida cotidiana. The example of El astrologo fingido by Calderon de la Barca shows that Anthony Close’s reconstruction of the collective comic mentality of the age of Cervantes is an appropriate frame for understanding the workings of humor in contemporary theater. French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter sheds light on other aspects o...
Rilce. Revista de Filología Hispánica, 2019
un sistema en el cual los beneméritos en las Indias pretenden una gratificación mediante relacion... more un sistema en el cual los beneméritos en las Indias pretenden una gratificación mediante relaciones autobiográficas. En las Elegías observamos la transformación de un catálogo de beneméritos novogranadinos en una epopeya cuya fuente de autoridad no es el individuo, sino el colectivo de los veteranos. Castellanos encontró el modelo para su papel de portavoz de la "nobleza" en Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, autor de las Generaciones y semblanzas (ca. 1460).
Iberoromania, 2016
ResumenPartiendo de una discusión crítica de la noción de la subjetividad, y de posibles alternat... more ResumenPartiendo de una discusión crítica de la noción de la subjetividad, y de posibles alternativas conceptuales (“sistema psíquico”, “
La Fractura Historiografica Las Investigaciones De Edad Media Y Renacimiento Desde El Tercer Milenio 2008 Isbn 978 84 934697 7 1 Pags 599 610, 2008
y el anónimo Lazarillo comparten una estructura básica esencial: un narrador en primera persona r... more y el anónimo Lazarillo comparten una estructura básica esencial: un narrador en primera persona relata sus aventuras, sus méritos y servicios, por así decirlo, a un superior, a saber, Vuestra Merced. Si bien no pretendo afirmar que entre los dos textos exista una filiación en términos de imitación o parodia, sí quiero llamar la atención sobre el hecho de que los dos auctores (autor cum actor) persiguen la ratificación de sus personas como oficiales y autores por parte de una autoridad institucional 1. Con la aparición de un
Visiones Y Revisiones Cervantinas Actas Selectas Del Vii Congreso Internacional De La Asociacion De Cervantistas 2011 Isbn 9788496408890 Pags 353 362, 2011
«Pocas cosas como las mercedes regias obsesionaban tanto a los castellanos» de los Siglos de Oro,... more «Pocas cosas como las mercedes regias obsesionaban tanto a los castellanos» de los Siglos de Oro, constata Salustiano de Dios en su estudio Gracia, merced y patronazgo real. 1 Es bien sabido que Miguel de Cervantes fue uno de ellos. En mi comunicación, no me interesa el móvil económico de la solicitud del gran autor ni su ansia de reconocimiento del Rey por sus servicios. Más bien, voy a analizar las implicaciones de su solicitud, o sea, los efectos que tenía el procedimiento burocrático de solicitar una merced regia. Mantengo que el caso de Cervantes demuestra que las Relaciones de méritos y servicios interpelaban al pretendiente, forzándole a identificarse con una imagen del perfecto sujeto de Su Majestad. A la vez, la
Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, 2001
eHumanista, 2004
In his 1990 'Eine' Geschichte der spanischen Literatur ('A' History of Spanish Literature) 1 Hans... more In his 1990 'Eine' Geschichte der spanischen Literatur ('A' History of Spanish Literature) 1 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht traced the interplay between the experience of alterity, the emergence of (modern) subjectivity and literature in medieval and early modern Iberia. In his ambitious and provocative study, which has never received due attention from Ibero-medievalists, Gumbrecht labels Fernán Pérez de Guzmán as "one of the most important Castilian historiographers of the 15 th century" ["einer der bedeutendsten kastilischen Geschichtsschreiber des 15. Jahrhunderts"] (109-10). Gumbrecht discerns in Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas a "fascination with phenomena of subjectivity which materialized in his particular interest in the discrepancy between roles and their respective bearers and made him, again and again, inquire into the reasons for those discrepancies" ["Faszination durch Phänomene der Subjektivität, welche sich in seinem besonderen Interesse für die Diskrepanz zwischen Rollen und ihren jeweiligen Trägern konkretisierte und ihn immer wieder nach den Gründen für solche Diskrepanzen fragen ließ"] (161). These few remarks were instrumental in the embryonic phase of my research into Iberian medieval historiography, which culminated in the recent publication of my Generaciones y semblanzas: Memory and Genealogy in Medieval Iberian Historiography. The course of my research, however, led me on different roads and I never explored the issue of subjectivity in Generaciones. The present study, then, is an attempt to pay a debt. In my book, I describe Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's best-known work as a genealogical register in which aristocratic memory and individual mnemotechniques converge. Embedding Pérez's text into late-medieval horizons of expectations, I argue that his semblanzas are transcriptions of mnemonic images; Generaciones y semblanzas is a genealogical inventory with the purpose of assuring the power of the so-called Nobleza Nueva. In the monograph I focus on the writing and reading of semblanzas; in the present article I will further explore an issue implicit in the contention that Generaciones primarily supports the interests of a layer of Castilian nobility: the workings of ideology. Against the all too reductive view of Generaciones as a manifesto of class interest, as it were, I posit an Althusserian reading, analyzing how Pérez de Guzmán's ensemble of semblanzas effects interpellation, producing subjects who imaginarily identify with the nobility's values, habitus and codes of behavior. This line of argumentation has to maneuver between the Scylla of determinism and the Charybdis of teleology. It is important to realize that the ideology that shaped Generaciones did not simply subject individuals, but offered compelling ideological images which had to be negotiated-even within Generaciones-with alternative or complementary images, some derived from traditional discourses and others foreshadowing realignments of power. For this reason, I consider it necessary to engage the analysis of semblanzas in a diachronic perspective too, reading Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones against Fernando del Pulgar's Claros varones de Castilla. This alignment of texts will also show that there is no simple linear progress from "weak" medieval subjectivity through "pre-renascimental nascent" subjectivity to (early) modern critical edition would require a detailed collation of the manuscripts of Generaciones with the printed versions of
Hispania, 2005
Fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of en... more Fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangled, faded readings and a challenge to the reader. While the parameters of writing sentimental fiction and its textuality have been explored with great success, its readers and how they approached these works have been largely neglected. Based on a reconstruction of the medical notion of love-as-sickness (amor heroes), premodern reading habits and interpretive strategies, this book approaches canonical works of sentimental romance from the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader. An analysis of "Don Quijote" silhouetted against the subtext of sentimental romance reveals how faculty psychology and lovesickness resonate in Golden Age literature.
Heidelberg, 29-30 April 2022
![Research paper thumbnail of “Rousseau méconnu: Lateinamerika und der Gesellschaftsvertrag (Simón Bolívar, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento).” Planète Rousseau: Zur heteronomen Genealogie der Moderne. Ed. Stephan Leopold and Gerhard Poppenberg. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015. 213-234. [Einleitung]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/36588122/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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Colonial Spanish bureaucracy produced masses of 'autobiographical' texts (relaciones de méritos a... more Colonial Spanish bureaucracy produced masses of 'autobiographical' texts (relaciones de méritos and servicios) which forced/invited individuals to present themselves as perfect subjects of the King in order to be rewarded. Bureaucracy produced the officials of the colonial regime, and, at the same time, it provided individuals with the possibility of exploring the literary potential of writing one's curriculum vitae. This book helps contextualize a body of often-used yet understudied historic sources; it indicates that the fabric of early modern society was held together by a pervasive economy of mercedes (rewards); and it shows that the tension between state-induced production of autobiographical documents and the individual's endeavor to outsmart this system is at the origin of modern forms of literature
This is an exploration of medieval modes of subject constitution and their transformation in 15th... more This is an exploration of medieval modes of subject constitution and their transformation in 15th-century Spanish sentimental romance, with a particular focus on Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor. Drawing on premodern psychological models, it argues that courtly self-fashioning through amatory performance provided an alternative and threat to the medieval gradual build-up of the self through hexis and habitus. In the light of the unsettling gender implications for the courtly lover, the authors of sentimental fiction explored new ways of subject constitution based not on passionate attachment but on identification. Cárcel de amor shows how new forms of writing and reading techniques and authorship provided an avenue for a new notion of interiority that would be constitutive for the Golden Age of Spanish literature.
This book is a reading of the first picaresque novel, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fo... more This book is a reading of the first picaresque novel, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y de sus fortunas y adversidades, against the backdrop of the contemporary "economy of mercedes." An astoundingly complex bureaucratic system produced a large body of "autobiographical" texts, known as relaciones de méritos y servicios, in which the insignificant subject produced a record of his services to the King. Lazarillo is a service record of its own kind. Lázaro is interpellated by Vuestra Merced, a stand-in for the sovereign. He is invited to a phantasmatic identification with authoritative and authorized images. However, he uses the tactical blind spot of strategic assujettissement as his place whence to assume his own voice and fashion himself. Lázaro tries to dupe the Archive and supplement the void in the register of authority with his own discourse.
Hallándose la descolonización en América ante el problema de no poder ser recuperación de un pasa... more Hallándose la descolonización en América ante el problema de no poder ser recuperación de un pasado precolonial, tampoco puede prescindir de las estructuras y jerarquías coloniales, entre ellas, la lengua castellana. A esto se suma que los estados postcoloniales fueron entes políticos antes de lograr una clara autodefinición De ahí que las prácticas simbólicas, tales como la prensa y la literatura, desempeñaron un papel clave en la constitución de estas comunidades postcoloniales. Sin embargo, esta literatura no puede funcionar de una manera simple y unívoca: lo que sería lo propio –la cultura española, el indígena, el negro y “la chusma”– a menudo juega el papel del otro, mientras que el otro –la cultura francesa, anglosajona y, en el caso de Martí, también la estadounidense– funciona como instancia de identificación. Así nos encontramos ante dos fenómenos estudiados extensivamente en la teoría postcolonial –el othering y la mimicry–, que son los que constituyen, a menudo de una manera aporética, la escritura de la independencia
Scholarship has celebrated Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas as a forerunner of ... more Scholarship has celebrated Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas as a forerunner of modern biography and as a sober piece of trustworthy historiography. Silhouetting the text against medieval horizons of expectations, Robert Folger argues that semblanzas take the shape of blueprints for the formation of mnemonic images. He traces the intricate intertextual web with the nodal point Generaciones, reconstructing the dominant pragmatic orientation toward preserving aristocratic memory. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of Generaciones, Folger pinpoints the emergence of semblanzas in the earliest testimonies of vernacular Iberian historiography and follows their evolution until the end of the 15th century
Spanish 15th-century sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangl... more Spanish 15th-century sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangled, faded readings, a challenge to the reader. While the parameters of writing sentimental fiction and its textuality have been explored with great success, reading and readers have been largely neglected.
Based on a reconstruction of the medical notion of love-as-sickness (amor hereos), premodern reading habits, and interpretive strategies, this book approaches canonical works of sentimental romance from the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader. An analysis of Don Quijote silhouetted against the subtext of sentimental romance indicates how faculty psychology and lovesickness resonate in Golden Age literature.
La historiografía indiana, la fuente más importante para conocer la realidad de las colonias espa... more La historiografía indiana, la fuente más importante para conocer la realidad de las colonias españolas en América y de las culturas precolombinas, está constituida por textos procedentes de los más diversos contextos pragmáticos: la legislación, la administración, la Iglesia (con sus órdenes religiosas y su labor misionera), el humanismo y el mundo indígena. Tanto en la colonia como en España, estos textos crean y preservan -en ocasiones destruyen- un pasado complejo; son herramientas y vehículos de memoria. Al estudiarlos desde una perspectiva interdisciplinaria como la de los trabajos aquí reunidos, emergen las luchas y las reivindicaciones de 'contra-memorias' y se pone de manifiesto el carácter múltiple y conflictivo del proceso hacia la autorización del saber histórico
El ejemplo de El astrologo fingido de Calderon de la Barca demuestra que la reconstruccion propues... more El ejemplo de El astrologo fingido de Calderon de la Barca demuestra que la reconstruccion propuesta por Anthony Close de la mentalidad comica colectiva del tiempo de Cervantes puede servir como marco apropiado para entender la comicidad en el teatro de comedias con-temporaneo. La teoria del filosofo frances Henri Bergson sobre la risa aclara otras facetas de lo comico en el teatro. Sobre todo en los aspectos metateatrales de El astrologo fingido , observamos la rigidez mecanica bergsoniana que caracteriza los papeles teatrales, produciendo en los espectadores un alivio comico en las normas de conducta y papeles sociales que experimentan en su vida cotidiana. The example of El astrologo fingido by Calderon de la Barca shows that Anthony Close’s reconstruction of the collective comic mentality of the age of Cervantes is an appropriate frame for understanding the workings of humor in contemporary theater. French philosopher Henri Bergson’s theory of laughter sheds light on other aspects o...
Rilce. Revista de Filología Hispánica, 2019
un sistema en el cual los beneméritos en las Indias pretenden una gratificación mediante relacion... more un sistema en el cual los beneméritos en las Indias pretenden una gratificación mediante relaciones autobiográficas. En las Elegías observamos la transformación de un catálogo de beneméritos novogranadinos en una epopeya cuya fuente de autoridad no es el individuo, sino el colectivo de los veteranos. Castellanos encontró el modelo para su papel de portavoz de la "nobleza" en Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, autor de las Generaciones y semblanzas (ca. 1460).
Iberoromania, 2016
ResumenPartiendo de una discusión crítica de la noción de la subjetividad, y de posibles alternat... more ResumenPartiendo de una discusión crítica de la noción de la subjetividad, y de posibles alternativas conceptuales (“sistema psíquico”, “
La Fractura Historiografica Las Investigaciones De Edad Media Y Renacimiento Desde El Tercer Milenio 2008 Isbn 978 84 934697 7 1 Pags 599 610, 2008
y el anónimo Lazarillo comparten una estructura básica esencial: un narrador en primera persona r... more y el anónimo Lazarillo comparten una estructura básica esencial: un narrador en primera persona relata sus aventuras, sus méritos y servicios, por así decirlo, a un superior, a saber, Vuestra Merced. Si bien no pretendo afirmar que entre los dos textos exista una filiación en términos de imitación o parodia, sí quiero llamar la atención sobre el hecho de que los dos auctores (autor cum actor) persiguen la ratificación de sus personas como oficiales y autores por parte de una autoridad institucional 1. Con la aparición de un
Visiones Y Revisiones Cervantinas Actas Selectas Del Vii Congreso Internacional De La Asociacion De Cervantistas 2011 Isbn 9788496408890 Pags 353 362, 2011
«Pocas cosas como las mercedes regias obsesionaban tanto a los castellanos» de los Siglos de Oro,... more «Pocas cosas como las mercedes regias obsesionaban tanto a los castellanos» de los Siglos de Oro, constata Salustiano de Dios en su estudio Gracia, merced y patronazgo real. 1 Es bien sabido que Miguel de Cervantes fue uno de ellos. En mi comunicación, no me interesa el móvil económico de la solicitud del gran autor ni su ansia de reconocimiento del Rey por sus servicios. Más bien, voy a analizar las implicaciones de su solicitud, o sea, los efectos que tenía el procedimiento burocrático de solicitar una merced regia. Mantengo que el caso de Cervantes demuestra que las Relaciones de méritos y servicios interpelaban al pretendiente, forzándole a identificarse con una imagen del perfecto sujeto de Su Majestad. A la vez, la
Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Frühen Neuzeit, 2001
eHumanista, 2004
In his 1990 'Eine' Geschichte der spanischen Literatur ('A' History of Spanish Literature) 1 Hans... more In his 1990 'Eine' Geschichte der spanischen Literatur ('A' History of Spanish Literature) 1 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht traced the interplay between the experience of alterity, the emergence of (modern) subjectivity and literature in medieval and early modern Iberia. In his ambitious and provocative study, which has never received due attention from Ibero-medievalists, Gumbrecht labels Fernán Pérez de Guzmán as "one of the most important Castilian historiographers of the 15 th century" ["einer der bedeutendsten kastilischen Geschichtsschreiber des 15. Jahrhunderts"] (109-10). Gumbrecht discerns in Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones y semblanzas a "fascination with phenomena of subjectivity which materialized in his particular interest in the discrepancy between roles and their respective bearers and made him, again and again, inquire into the reasons for those discrepancies" ["Faszination durch Phänomene der Subjektivität, welche sich in seinem besonderen Interesse für die Diskrepanz zwischen Rollen und ihren jeweiligen Trägern konkretisierte und ihn immer wieder nach den Gründen für solche Diskrepanzen fragen ließ"] (161). These few remarks were instrumental in the embryonic phase of my research into Iberian medieval historiography, which culminated in the recent publication of my Generaciones y semblanzas: Memory and Genealogy in Medieval Iberian Historiography. The course of my research, however, led me on different roads and I never explored the issue of subjectivity in Generaciones. The present study, then, is an attempt to pay a debt. In my book, I describe Fernán Pérez de Guzmán's best-known work as a genealogical register in which aristocratic memory and individual mnemotechniques converge. Embedding Pérez's text into late-medieval horizons of expectations, I argue that his semblanzas are transcriptions of mnemonic images; Generaciones y semblanzas is a genealogical inventory with the purpose of assuring the power of the so-called Nobleza Nueva. In the monograph I focus on the writing and reading of semblanzas; in the present article I will further explore an issue implicit in the contention that Generaciones primarily supports the interests of a layer of Castilian nobility: the workings of ideology. Against the all too reductive view of Generaciones as a manifesto of class interest, as it were, I posit an Althusserian reading, analyzing how Pérez de Guzmán's ensemble of semblanzas effects interpellation, producing subjects who imaginarily identify with the nobility's values, habitus and codes of behavior. This line of argumentation has to maneuver between the Scylla of determinism and the Charybdis of teleology. It is important to realize that the ideology that shaped Generaciones did not simply subject individuals, but offered compelling ideological images which had to be negotiated-even within Generaciones-with alternative or complementary images, some derived from traditional discourses and others foreshadowing realignments of power. For this reason, I consider it necessary to engage the analysis of semblanzas in a diachronic perspective too, reading Pérez de Guzmán's Generaciones against Fernando del Pulgar's Claros varones de Castilla. This alignment of texts will also show that there is no simple linear progress from "weak" medieval subjectivity through "pre-renascimental nascent" subjectivity to (early) modern critical edition would require a detailed collation of the manuscripts of Generaciones with the printed versions of
Hispania, 2005
Fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of en... more Fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental fiction can be described as a palimpsest, a dense web of entangled, faded readings and a challenge to the reader. While the parameters of writing sentimental fiction and its textuality have been explored with great success, its readers and how they approached these works have been largely neglected. Based on a reconstruction of the medical notion of love-as-sickness (amor heroes), premodern reading habits and interpretive strategies, this book approaches canonical works of sentimental romance from the perspective of a medical-sensitive reader. An analysis of "Don Quijote" silhouetted against the subtext of sentimental romance reveals how faculty psychology and lovesickness resonate in Golden Age literature.
Heidelberg, 29-30 April 2022
The resurgence of World Literature must be seen in relation to the economization of all spheres o... more The resurgence of World Literature must be seen in relation to the economization of all spheres of life. Traditional, ‘specialized’ literary criticism replicates literature’s power to interpellate subjects characterized by attention. Both literature and state funded literary criticism in research and teaching are currently under siege because they are counterhegemonic in relation to a lifeworld shaped by a global attention deficit syndrome, which
is the bedrock of a hypertrophic consumerism. Recent proposals for writing histories and systematic descriptions of World Literature are complicit with this move because they champion, to the detriment of deep attention, the relevance, mobility, exchange
value, and translatability of texts, successfully competing with traditional ‘painstaking’ practices of literary criticism for ever dwindling institutional resources.
