Affective Communities In Late-Medieval Iberian Literature

197 Pages·2011·1.05 MB·English

by  Henry Samuel Berlin

AFFECTIVE COMMUNITIES IN LATE-MEDIEVAL IBERIAN LITERATURE

A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

by
Henry Samuel Berlin
August 2011
© 2011 Henry Samuel Berlin
AFFECTIVE COMMUNITIES IN LATE-MEDIEVAL IBERIAN LITERATURE
Henry Samuel Berlin, Ph.D.
Cornell University 2011
My dissertation offers a new account of the explosion of sentimental literature in
fifteenth-century Iberia and, at the same time, suggests a new way of reading that literature.
Through the concept of the affective community, which suggests that political, religious, and
literary communities (genres) are held together and shaped not so much by shared emotion as by
a shared ethical attitude toward emotion, I analyze exemplary works of the principal genres
involved in this explosion: cancionero poetry and sentimental fiction. Other important genres
such as the chronicle and chivalric fiction also play key roles in my analysis, and my approach
throughout is comparative, dealing substantially with works not only from Castile, but also from
the kingdoms of Portugal and Aragon.
The most important texts in the dissertation are Pedro de Corral‘s Crónica sarracina (ca.
1430); Pedro, Constable of Portugal‘s Sátira de felice e infelice vida (ca. 1450); and the poetry of
Ausiàs March (ca. 1397-1459). However, I also discuss moral, theological, and political treatises
by crucial figures such as Alonso de Cartagena (1384-1456); Alfonso de Madrigal, el Tostado
(1410-1455); Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo (ca. 1404-1470); Diego de Valera (1412-1488);
Duarte I of Portugal (1391-1438); and the Infante Pedro, Duke of Coimbra (1392-1449).
Through my discussion of these treatises, I show how the emotional asceticism of Stoic and
early-Christian thought was increasingly held to be inadequate for the period‘s political
challenges, giving way before a politics that emphasized psychological unity beyond the strict
limits of reason.
It is in the more traditionally literary works, however, that these evolving political
postures found their furthest-reaching development. I show that Corral, the Constable, and
March each develops a novel affective rhetoric that reenvisions or rejects their communities‘
preexisting affective paradigms, laying bare how mourning and compassion can form the basis
for new communitarian possibilities. I argue, finally, that this rhetorical modeling of a
communitarian politics of mourning and compassion – and the forms of subjectivity it articulates
– is relevant to ongoing contemporary debates surrounding affect and community that seek new
formulations of these concepts after the so-called death of the subject.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Henry Samuel Berlin was born on October 22, 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2002,
he graduated from Earlham College, in Richmond, Indiana, with a degree in Spanish. From 2005
to 2011, he pursued graduate studies at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, under the
direction of Simone Pinet. During this time, he studied Catalan in Barcelona, Spain and
Portuguese in Lisbon, Portugal.

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To the memory of my father

The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

– Philip Larkin, ―The Mower‖

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have written this dissertation without the help of my Special Committee:
Simone Pinet, my chair, was an extraordinary intellectual and professional mentor, adept at
keeping me on track without constraining my ambition or curiosity; Cynthia Robinson was a
model of scholarly rigor in the service of daring and creative projects; Cary Howie broadened
my perspective and asked crucial questions; and Josiah Blackmore was remarkably generous
with his time, experience, and thought. I would also like to thank Joan Ramon Resina, whose
early guidance contributed to the final form this dissertation would take.
My time at Cornell was also greatly enriched by my friends and colleagues. William
Viestenz, Zac Zimmer, Juan Manuel Espinosa, and Juan Sierra were wonderful companions and
interlocutors. I won‘t forget the hospitality and wit of Marcela Romero, António and Kathryn de
Ridder-Vignone, Daniel Tonozzi, Caroline Ferraris-Besso, or Milan Allan. I learned a great deal
in the classroom and the office from Ashley Puig-Herz and Beth Bouloukos. Scott Forth and
Federico Sor were ideal bandmates in the Enemies of Promise and Leones Hebreos, respectively.
I was also very fortunate to have the friendship, away from Cornell, of Ben Owen, Dan Stifler,
Peter Northup, and Ryan McLoughlin, and of Yahveh Díaz Quiñones, who suggested crucial
readings.
I would like to thank the Graduate School and the Institute of European Studies at
Cornell, as well as the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and Luso-American Development
Foundation, for funding research that made this dissertation possible. The staff of the
Department of Romance Studies was endlessly patient and helpful. I am also deeply grateful to
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my family and, in particular, to my mother Joan, whose steady support and love have allowed me
great freedom in life.
Finally, my time at Cornell would have been inconceivably different without the love and
friendship of María Fernanda Negrete Martínez, my future‘s accomplice.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical Sketch………………………………………………………………………………iii

Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………...iv

Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………v

Introduction: Passion, Emotion, Affect…………………………………………………………...1

I. City, Desert, Cloister, Court: Reading and Writing Community in Fifteenth-Century Iberia...13

II. Ritual Mourning and National Nostalgia in Pedro de Corral‘s Crónica sarracina…………..59

III. The Constable‘s Reward: Will, Discretion, and Compassion in the Sátira de felice e infelice
vida……………………………………………………………………………………….87

IV. Alone Together: Ausiàs March‘s Ethical Appeal for Shared Salvation……………………133

Conclusion: Obligation, Grief, Compassion……………………………………………………167

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….174
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INTRODUCTION

PASSION, EMOTION, AFFECT

[L]a idea es averiguar si el saber del que emanaron en un primero estadio los términos de la pasión guarda algún
mensaje viviente y desconocido para nosotros, y examinar, al mismo tiempo, cuáles fueron las circunstancias –
históricas, sociales, epistemológicas – que han nublado para nosotros ese conocimiento.
– Ivonne Bordelois, Etimología de las pasiones

Iberia‘s fifteenth century saw the rise or resurgence of literature that was not just
sentimental, as it is sometimes called, but about sentiment itself. Cancionero lyric and
sentimental fiction are often studied as expressions of the affective system known as courtly
love, and critics sometimes try to isolate particularly Iberian strains of courtly culture.
Meanwhile, in genres we are less likely to think of as sentimental, such as wisdom literature and
romance – which through its epic and chivalric themes colors a great deal of the period‘s
historiographic production – ethical questions regarding both public and private emotion begin to
arise persistently. Two critical tendencies have defined the study of affect in the literature of this
period. The first is the modern tendency to understand literary works in general, and lyric poems
in particular, as relatively transparent expressions of their authors‘ inner feelings. From this
perspective, the emotional commonplaces still pervasive in fifteenth-century texts look like
medieval residue, soon to be washed away by nascent humanism in a march toward the novel.
But the second, and more common, tendency is to understand the emotions in particular texts as
(mere) instantiations of widespread tropes, so that texts themselves are divided into rare
masterpieces and their epigones. This critical practice may reflect a more ―medieval‖
understanding of authorship, but it severely limits interpretive possibilities and makes it difficult
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