Corporeality and textuality in selected medieval Hispanic texts, c.a. 400-1350
This dissertation is a study of the way in which the body and its associated imagery of clothing is used to focus attention upon ideas of literary composition and interpretation in four medieval Hispanic texts. Chapter One explores the relationship of the body to rhetoric, and more particularly to t...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Language: | English |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01-01-1992
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| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | This dissertation is a study of the way in which the body and its associated imagery of clothing is used to focus attention upon ideas of literary composition and interpretation in four medieval Hispanic texts. Chapter One explores the relationship of the body to rhetoric, and more particularly to the tropes of metaphor and allegory. The representation of poetic meaning as a body covered by the robes of metaphor or allegory is a means whereby a poet may protect a truth while at the same time allowing it to assume a tangible, perceptible form beneath its garments of words, and therefore alerting its readers to its presence. While the embodiment of truth in language is facilitated by the configuration of meaning in terms of body and garments, this same imagery may be used to cast doubt upon the reliability of language to communicate truth, since verbal garments may also be used to disguise a body that is base and sinful. This interpenetration between corporeality and textuality is actualized in Prudentius' Peristephanon and the anonymous Poema de mio Cid. Chapter Two explores the process whereby bodies become objects of inscription, and delineates the linguistic and discursive implications that such a textualization entails. Chapter Three also explores the body as a source of written discourse. Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora presents the virginal body of Mary as the origin of poetic language. Berceo attempts to demonstrate for the reader or listener the proper procedures for understanding Mary's virginity as it is manifested in language, and for recreating its perfection in poetry. Chapter Four examines another instance of the metaphorization of a book as a woman's body. Juan Ruiz, in the Libro de buen amor, presents his text as an eroticized body disguised by deceptive garments of Christian piety, and thus he sexualizes the process of interpretation by transforming it into a seductive undressing of poetic meaning. |
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| ISBN: | 9780315928671 0315928670 |