Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late Medieval Iberia (Toronto Iberic)

The turn of the fifteenth century saw an explosion of literature throughout Iberia that was not just sentimental, but about sentiment. Alone Together reveals the political, ethical, and poetic dimensions of this phenomenon, which was among the most important of the substantial changes in intellectual and literary culture taking place in the crowns of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. With careful analyses of lyric poetry, sentimental prose, and wide-ranging treatises in multiple languages, this study foregrounds the dense web of relations among these genres and linguistic and cultural traditions. Drawing on Stoic and early monastic thought, authors such as the Marqués de Santillana, Ausiàs March, and Alfonso de Madrigal explored the unifying potential of shared emotion in an ethical rehabilitation that cut across the personal and political, exalting friendly conversation, civic communication, and collective poetic composition. In his readings of these authors, Henry Berlin references recent work on lyric theory and the history and theory of emotion, from classical antiquity to the modern day. An exploration of the political and poetic potential of shared emotion, Alone Together shows how a heuristic focus on the notion of passion is illuminating for broader ongoing discussions about the nature of emotion, the lyric, and subjectivity.

The turn of the fifteenth century saw an explosion of literature throughout Iberia that was not just sentimental, but about sentiment. Alone Together reveals the political, ethical, and poetic dimensions of this phenomenon, which was among the most important of the substantial changes in intellectual and literary culture taking place in the crowns of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. With careful analyses of lyric poetry, sentimental prose, and wide-ranging treatises in multiple languages, this study foregrounds the dense web of relations among these genres and linguistic and cultural traditions.

Drawing on Stoic and early monastic thought, authors such as the Marquis of Santillana, Ausiàs March, and Alfonso de Madrigal explored the unifying potential of shared emotion in an ethical rehabilitation that cut across the personal and political, exalting friendly conversation, civic communication, and collective poetic composition. In his readings of these authors, Henry Berlin references recent work on lyric theory and the history and theory of emotion, from classical antiquity to the modern day. An exploration of the political and poetic potential of shared emotion, Alone Together shows how a heuristic focus on the notion of passion is illuminating for broader ongoing discussions about the nature of emotion, the lyric, and subjectivity.

"The turn of the fifteenth century saw an explosion of literature throughout Iberia that was not just sentimental, but about sentiment. Alone Together reveals the political, ethical, and poetic dimensions of this phenomenon, which was among the most important of the substantial changes in intellectual and literary culture taking place in the crowns of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. With careful analyses of lyric poetry, sentimental prose, and wide-ranging treatises in multiple languages, this study foregrounds the dense web of relations among these genres and linguistic and cultural traditions. Drawing on Stoic and early monastic thought, authors such as the Marqués de Santillana, Ausiàs March, and Alfonso de Madrigal explored the unifying potential of shared emotion in an ethical rehabilitation that cut across the personal and political, exalting friendly conversation, civic communication, and collective poetic composition. In his readings of these authors, Henry Berlin references recent work on lyric theory and the history and theory of emotion, from classical antiquity to the modern day. An exploration of the political and poetic potential of shared emotion, Alone Together shows how a heuristic focus on the notion of passion is illuminating for broader ongoing discussions about the nature of emotion, the lyric, and subjectivity."-- Provided by publisher The turn of the fifteenth century throughout Iberia saw an explosion of literature that was not just sentimental but about sentiment as such. This explosion was among the most important of the substantial changes in intellectual and literary culture taking place in the crowns of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon as new dynasties took and consolidated power.The fact that these changes were concurrent implies no special relationship among them, and this is particularly true when one considers that the cultural changes were hardly uniform: as Portugal underwent the retreat of courtly lyric in favor of ethico-political treatises and increasingly robust official chronicles, that same lyric tradition underwent an unprecedented revival in Castile and a decisive process of linguistic change in Aragon. Cover 1 Half Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Epigraph 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Courtly Conflict and the Passions 14 Part One: Friendship and Pleasure 36 1 Classical Rhetoric and Vernacular Theories of Social Integration 38 2 Alfonso de Madrigal, el Tostado, on the Politics of Friendship 54 3 Reason and Its Discontents 70 Part Two: Compassion and Consolation 98 4 Impassibility, Pity, Community 100 5 Passionate Quotation 119 6 The Impasse of the Courtly Reward 159 7 Confession, Consolation, and the Poetics of Hylomorphism 191 Conclusion: Tragic Enclosure 217 Notes 230 Works Cited 268 Index 292 Series list 332 Alone Together reinterprets the explosion of sentimental poetry and prose in fifteenth-century Iberia.