The Persistence of Presence: Emblem and Ritual in Baroque Spain (University of Toronto Romance Series)

__The Persistence of Presence__ analyzes the relationship between emblem books, containing combinations of pictures and texts, and Spanish literature in the early modern period.

The Persistence of Presence analyzes the relationship between emblem books, containing combinations of pictures and texts, and Spanish literature in the early modern period. As representations of ideas and ideals, emblems are allegories produced in a particular place and time, and their study can shed light on the central cultural and political activities of an era.

Bradley J. Nelson argues that the emblem was a primary indicator of the social and political functions of diverse literary practices in early modern Spain, from theatre to epic prose. Furthermore, the disintegration of a unified medieval world view left many seeking the kinds of deep knowledge that could be accessed through symbolic pictures, increasing their cultural significance. In this detailed examination of emblem books, sacred and secular theatre, and Cervantes' critique of baroque allegory in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Nelson connects the early history of emblematics with the drive towards cultural and political hegemony in Counter-Reformation Spain.

Contents 5 Illustrations 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 PART ONE. The Emblem 43 1. Emblem Theory, Emblem Practice: A Consideration of Juan de Borja’s Resistance to Theory 43 2. Anamorphosis and Theoretical Depth of Meaning: Juan de Horozco’s Emblemas morales 65 PART TWO. Applied Emblematics 87 3. Lope de Vega’s Emblematic Indios: The Discovery of America, or the End(s) of History 87 4. From Hieroglyphic Presence to Representational Sign: The Auto Sacramental and the Ritual Colonization of Modernity 110 5. Calderón’s El alcalde de Zalamea: Pedro Crespo as Literary Subject 141 PART THREE. Bodies and Signs 171 6. A Ritual Practice for Modernity: Baltasar Gracián’s Organized Body of Taste 171 7. Bodies and Corpses, Voices and Silence: Grotesque Presence in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda 205 Conclusion: Authorial Emblems 240 Notes 249 Works Cited 267 Index 283 Bradley J. Nelson argues that the emblem was a primary indicator of the social and political functions of diverse literary practices in early modern Spain, from theatre to epic prose. Furthermore, the disintegration of a unified medieval world view left many seeking the kinds of deep knowledge that could be accessed through symbolic pictures, increasing their cultural significance. In this detailed examination of emblem books, sacred and secular theatre, and Cervantes' critique of baroque allegory in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, Nelson connects the early history of emblematics with the drive towards cultural and political hegemony in Counter-Reformation Spain."--pub. desc