Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Melancholy and Masculinist Poetics in Early
Modern Spanish Lyric
1. The Gendering of Lyric and Epic in Alonso de Ercilla’s La
Araucana (1569–1590)
2. The Apollonian and Orphic Masculinity of Fernando de Herrera’s
Algunas obras (1582)
3. Feminine Voice and Masculinist Aims in Miguel de Cervantes’s La
Galatea (1585)
4. Between Liuvigild and Ingund in Juan de Arguijo’s Versos
(1612)
5. “El melancólico vacío”: The Origins and Fate of Lyric according
to Luis de Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea and Soledades
(1612–1617)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Felipe Valencia is an assistant professor of Spanish at Utah
State University.
"Felipe Valencia has written a remarkable book, a wide-ranging
study of early modern poetry, in the manner of Leah Middlebrook
(Imperial Lyric, Pennsylvania State UP, 2009) and Isabel Torres
(Love Poetry in the Spanish Golden Age, Tamesis 2013), but with a
focus on the turn of the seventeenth century."—Ignacio
Navarrete, Bulletin of the Comediantes
"The Melancholy Void offers a valuable contribution to studies of
early modern literary theory and our understanding of the evolution
of Spanish lyric poetry in relation to extratextual phenomena. . .
. The author deftly balances breadth and depth to deliver a
fascinating history of Spanish lyric and of the gendered nature of
poetic genres in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries."—Katherine L. Brown, Revista de Estudios
Hispánicos
"Just for the wealth of lyric literary history discussed,
Valencia's monograph is a valuable reference for students of
early-modern Spain. The book convincingly demonstrates the links
between lyric expression, melancholic subjectivity, and gender
violence in early-modern lyric poetry. Its denunciation of gender
violence in early-modern poetry helps open the door to necessary
but difficult discussions about the harmful legacies of
arch-canonical poets and the lyric poetic tradition more generally.
The study of early-modern poetry in Spain will no doubt be better
off for having the reckoning with gender violence proposed by The
Melancholy Void."—Luis Rodríguez-Rincón, Calíope: Journal of
the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry
"One of the most daring intellectual contributions of the book: the
denunciation not only of a masculinist imaginary, but of an
authentic rape culture in early modern Spain and, what would be
even more shocking, in the scholarly interpretation and commentary
of the poetic texts of this period by the greater part of modern
and contemporary academia on both sides of the Atlantic."—Simón A.
Villegas, Creneida: Journal of Hispanic Literatures
"The Melancholy Void presents a trove of interpretive and scholarly
riches . . . this book represents an important addition to the
study of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century poetry. It will, no
doubt, provides much food for thought and debate."—María Cristina
Quintero, Hispanic Review
"The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora
provides valuable critical insights into literary theory, the
concept of melancholy, and masculine versus feminine violence as
focal points of Ealy Modern Spanish literature."—Salvatore
Poeta, Hispania
"[The Melancholy Void is] a powerful and excellent study that
suggests a viable route to see beyond longstanding critical
approaches to the history and theory of la nueva poesía in early
modern Spain and, more broadly, the history and theory of lyric
poetry."—Andrés Olmedo Orejuela, Comitatus: A Journal of
Medieval and Renaissance Studies
“This is a terrific piece of scholarship that delves into the
period of one of Spain’s most important authors, Luis de Góngora.
Felipe Valencia offers a fascinating genealogy of the lyric
tradition, grounding it in a dazzling array of deep readings of
primary texts, together with an insightful application of
theoretical and critical secondary material.”—Mary B. Quinn,
associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of
New Mexico
“An innovative way of looking at this important corpus of texts,
shedding new light on crucial matters such as the ties between
poetics, philosophy, affect, and rhetoric. The astute interlacement
between poetic theory and melancholy as a way of understanding the
masculine rhetoric present in the texts studied is convincing and
insightful.”—Rodrigo Cacho, faculty of modern and medieval
languages at the University of Cambridge
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