Cervantes' Persiles and the Travails of Romance

by Marina S. Brownlee

Overview

This collection of original essays presents new ways of looking at Cervantes’ final novel. Persiles, a work that engages with geopolitical models of race, ethnicity, nation, and religion, takes its inspiration from the highly influential Ethiopian Story (the Aithiopika) of Heliodorus. With particular relevance to the period, the  Persiles questions the issue of cultural pluralism in the Spanish empire and emphasizes the need to rethink the radically altered category of lo bárbaro/the barbarian (which included not only the Jew, the Muslim, and the Gypsy, but also the criollo, the mestizo, and the indiano), a new multiracial and multiethnic reality that posed a profound challenge to early modern Spain. The contributors offer a range of perspectives in spatial theory, psychology and subjectivity, visual culture, and literary theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487504786
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Series:	Toronto Iberic
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marina S. Brownlee is the Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Space and Place
Frederick de Armas, "Cervantes’ Hermetic Architectures: The Dangers Outside in Persiles IV"
Michael Armstrong-Roche, "The Lucianic Gaze Novelized: The Familiar Made Strange in Persiles"
Isabel Lozano Renieblas, "Chastity and Symbolism in the Persiles"

Psychic Dimensions
Anthony J. Cascardi, "Enigmas of Psychology in the Persiles"
William Childers, "Communal Norms and Individuated Desire in Persiles y Sigismunda"
Javier Patiño, "Cervantes’ Persiles and Early Modern Theories of Wonder"

Visual Effects
Marta Albalá Peregrín, "Visual Genres and the Rhetoric of Violence in Cervantes’ Persiles"
Patrick Lenaghan, "Illustrating Persiles: A Neoclassic Vision of Cervantes’s Last Novel"

Constructive Interruptions
David Castillo and William Egginton, "Cervantes’s Treatment of Otherness, Contamination, and Conventional Ideals in Persiles and Other Works"
Jacques Lezra, "Imaginary Labor"
Marina S. Brownlee, "Interruption and the Fragment: Heliodorus and the Persiles"

Works Cited

What People are Saying About This

Susan Byrne

"Innovative and insightful, Cervantes' Persiles and the Travails of Romance is a valuable contribution to scholarship on Golden Age Spain, and particularly on Miguel de Cervantes, taking scholarship on his last and posthumous novel in new and fruitful directions."

Stephen Rupp

"Valuable and coherent in its design, this volume brings together contributions that draw on current scholarship in the field and advance our understanding of Cervantes' work."

Barbara Fuchs

"This rich collection reminds us of the dazzling, daring text that is the Persiles, full of ambiguities, discontinuities, and displacements. As these scholars forcefully argue, we ignore it at our peril."

Editorial Reviews

"I believe this is an important volume that contains essays that are representative of how the reading of Cervantes’ last novel continues to evolve in the twenty-first century."—Luis F. Avilés, University of California Irvine, Bulletin of Spanish Studies

"This rich collection reminds us of the dazzling, daring text that is the Persiles, full of ambiguities, discontinuities, and displacements. As these scholars forcefully argue, we ignore it at our peril."

—Barbara Fuchs, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA
"Valuable and coherent in its design, this volume brings together contributions that draw on current scholarship in the field and advance our understanding of Cervantes' work."—Stephen Rupp, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto
"Innovative and insightful, Cervantes' Persiles and the Travails of Romance is a valuable contribution to scholarship on Golden Age Spain, and particularly on Miguel de Cervantes, taking scholarship on his last and posthumous novel in new and fruitful directions."—Susan Byrne, Department of World Languages and Cultures, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

From the Publisher

“I believe this is an important volume that contains essays that are representative of how the reading of Cervantes' last novel continues to evolve in the twenty-first century.”

Bulletin of Spanish Studies - Luis F. Avilés