Critical Essays on the Literatures of Spain and Spanish-America

251 Pages·1991·8.705 MB·English

by  Luis T. Gonzáles del Valle, Luis González del Valle, Julio Baena

CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE LITERATURES
OF SPAIN AND SPANISH-AMERICA
PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF SPANISH AND
SPANISH-AMERICAN STUDIES
Luis T. González-del-Valle, Director
LUIS T. GONZÁLEZ-DEL-VALLE
and JULIO BAENA, Editors
CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE
LITERATURES OF
SPAIN AND
SPANISH AMERICA
ANEJO ANALES DE LA LITERATURA ESPAÑOLA CONTEMPORANEA
SOCIETY OF SPANISH AND SPANISH-AMERICAN STUDIES
©Copyright, Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1991.
The Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies promotes bibli­
ographical, critical and pedagogical research in Spanish and Spanish-
American studies by publishing works ofp articular merit in these areas.
On occasion, the Society also publishes creative works. SSSAS is a
non-profit educational organization sponsored by the University of
Colorado at Boulder. It is located in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese, University of Colorado, Campus Box 278, Boulder,
Colorado, 80309-0278. USA.
International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 0-89295-064-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 91-62081
Printed in the United States of America
Impreso en los Estados Unidos de América
PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY OF SPANISH
AND SPANISH-AMERICAN STUDIES
Luis T. González-del-Valle, Director
This text was prepared by Sandy Adler, Foreign Language Word
Processing Specialist for the College of Arts and Sciences, University
of Colorado at Boulder.
CONTENTS
Fashioning a New World: Lope de Vega and Claramonte’s El nuevo rey
Gallinato. Frederick A. de Arm as..................................................................1
Heteroglossia en la poesía de Angel González. Douglas K. Benson..........11
Letters and Diaries as Narrative Strategies in Contemporary Catalan
Women’s Writing. Emilie L. Bergmann......................................................19
Degeneration, Discourse and Differentiation: Modernismo frente a
noventa y ocho Reconsidered. Richard A. Cardwell ...............................29
El rostro de Centroamérica reflejado en su literatura. Mario Alberti
Carrera .............................................................................................................47
Palimpsestic Biography: The Back Room. Linda Chown...............................57
The Backbone of Burlesque: Vertebral Jokes and Hoaxes in Cervantes’
Don Quixote. Kimberly Contag ....................................................................65
The Space of Sexual History: Strategies of Reading in El cuarto de
atrás and Reivindicación del Conde don Julián. Brad E pps...................75
Posmodernidad en Latinoamérica: literaturización y desliteraturización
en la Argentina contemporánea. Claudia Ferman......................................89
Cobra: Writing is the Art of Ellipsis and Digression. Mary Ann Gosser 111
Los signos condicionantes de la representación: el bloque didascalico.
Alfredo Hermenegildo .................................................................................121
Molina and the Weaving Goddess: Thread Imagery in Manuel Puig’s
El beso de la mujer araña. Priscilla Hunter................................................133
Reading Juan Ramón Jiménez’s “Espacio”: Intersubjectivity and Inter-
textuality. Catherine Jaffe............................................................................145
Voice and Intersubjectivity in Carmé Riera’s Narratives. Roberta
Johnson............................................................................................................153
Sor Juana as Composer: A Reappraisal of the Villancicos. Pamela H.
Long................................................................................................................161
La familia de Pascual Duarte y el efecto esquizo. Adolfo Marín-
Minguillón.......................................................................................................171
The “Dark Double” and the Patriarch in Dora Sedano’s Im diosa
de arena. Patricia W. O’Connor..................................................................181
The Madrid Theater Season of 1950: Politics of the Premios. Anthony
M. Pasquariello .............................................................................................187
The Novels of a Poet: Clara Janés. Janet Pérez ..........................................197
Resistance and Liberation: The Mythic Voice and Textual Authority
in Belli’s La mujer habitada. Timothy A.B. Richards.............................209
La manipulación del fragmento en Colibrí de Sarduy. Justo C. Ulloa
and Leonor A. Ulloa ...................................................................................215
Ramón Sender and Wartime Defenses: Contraataque as Fictive
Autobiography. Mary S. Vásquez...............................................................225
Realismo mágico en la narrativa Hispanoamericana actual: la perspectiva
de fin del siglo. Emil Volek.........................................................................235
v

ADVISORY EDITORS
Emilio Bejel Ricardo Landeira
John S. Geary Nina Molinaro
Asunción Homo Delgado Raymond L. Williams
This collections contains selected essays from the seventh annual Mid America
Conference on Hispanic Literature, University of Colorado at Boulder (1990).
Each contributor provided the Editors with an updated version of his/her study
weeks after the Conference had concluded. The collection is published with
financial support from the Committee on University Scholarly Publications
(CUSP).

FASHIONING A NEW WORLD:
LOPE DE VEGA AND CLARAMONTE’S
EL NUEVO REY GALLINATO*
Frederick A. de Armas
Pennsylvania State University
Although chronicles, political tracts and theological treatises delving into
what Tzvetan Todorov has called “the problematics of the exterior and remote
other” (3) abounded in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain, literary texts
dealing with the conquest of the New World were almost non-existent. Focus­
ing on Golden Age Drama, Robert Shannon stresses the “silence in the
corrales of Madrid on the subject of America” (5), while Francisco Ruiz-
Ramón marvels at “la increíble pobreza, cuantitativa y cualitativamente a la
vez, del tema americano en el teatro clásico español” (69). Such an absence is
particularly puzzling to Marcos Morfnigo, since he claims that the comedia is
the genre that serves as a substitute for the romances of chivalry. This critic
asks: “¿No se podría aducir para explicar el silencio de los poetas, consecuencia
de la escasa popularidad de la empresa, el argumento del insuficiente prestigio
heroico de la conquista, de su opaco brillo militar?” (18). Ruiz Ramón, on the
other hand, sees these American comedias as exceptional in that they portray
a divided Spanish consciousness that felt both “el orgullo de la empresa
acometida y el insobornable aguijón de la culpa” (137).1 This essay will look at
these and other questions involved in the perception of the “remote other” as
represented in a play that has not been included in the small list of Golden Age
dramas that develop the American theme.2
Ever since Menéndez Pelayo explained that “Lope ... fue el primer
dramaturgo que se embarcó en este ingrato argumento, de tan seductora
apariencia” (Estudios sobre el teatro 312), critics have listed El nuevo mundo
as the first comedia on the New World. Morely and Bruerton posit a date of
composition between 1598 and 1603 (370), dates that have been corroborated
by J. Lemartinel and Charles Minguet in their edition of the play (xv). El nuevo
rey Gallinato also belongs to this period. Pointing to a performance in Sala­
manca on April 29, 1604, Charles Ganelin adds: “In fact, a passing reference
to King Philip III and Queen Margarita (married on 18 April, 1599) and to the
Court in Madrid (which did not move to Valladolid until January, 1601),
suggests the play was written between April 1599 and January 1601” (15-16).
A version of this paper will appear in the Acta of the XVIII Congress of the
International Federation of Languages and Literatures held in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia,
August, 1990.
1
Consequently, El nuevo rey Gallinato not only deserves to be included among
the few American plays written during the Golden Age, but may displace
Lope’s El nuevo mundo as the first comedia dealing with the New World.3
At a time when Claramonte is receiving increased attention,4 it is most
appropriate to take a close look at how the encounter between two cultures is
represented in this historically significant comedia. El nuevo rey Gallinato
generally does not delve into the specificity of the “remote other.” There is no
sense that there are different Indian cultures,5 nor are they separated from
other pagans such as the Arabs. The are actually brought together as when the
Americanism xabas is set to rhyme with a term of Arabic origin, aljabas, both
meaning “bag” or “container,” or when later in the play a fantastic image of
Arab culture is inscribed into Chile, by having the Indians ride man-eating
camels, “dromedarios” (225-26). In Claramonte’s play, the kingdom that is
situated next to Chile and has as its god Ongol and its ruler Guacol is called
Cambox. Although Hernández Valcárcel refers to it as a “reino imaginario
donde se desarrolla parte de la acción” (178), in reality this is the kingdom of
Cambodia, which was often labeled as Camboxa during the epoch (Tadman ex,
note 16). Claramonte is then bringing together Asia and America in one play,
where geographical confusion6 serves to bring together non-Christian others
and deny them any claims to individuality or specificity. In so doing, Clara­
monte is attempting to “tame” and confine the “remote other” so that the
threat to the self would be more easily dispelled. Indian words are set next to
Asian terms to create the appearance of a homogeneous other rather than a
series of culturally threatening others, as in the line “y el gran Camf, de sus
bonxos” (178). Here “Camf’ seems to be an American term,7 while “bonxos”
are the Buddhist bonzes or monks.
But there is a more significant way in which the text seeks to diffuse the
threat of the other. As the Indians sing to the Sun god to come to them, a
woman dressed in skins emerges. They take her to be the god and retreat
trembling, but she asks them to come back, arguing that she is not a god.
Tipolda questions this figure in disbelief: “¿Que no has bajado del cielo?” and
another Indian warns the princess: “Guarda, reina, que te engaña, / que es dios
y quiere robarte / para el cielo” (185). In reality, this god is a shipwrecked
Spaniard. The function of deification is to reverse the sense of wonder. Up to
this point, the audience had been experiencing the marvels of the “remote
other” on stage. The wonders of the other may have begun to shake the
spectators’ belief in the superiority of their European Christian culture. But the
Indian characters in the play quickly remove this doubt that may have formed
in the minds of the spectators as the natives are portrayed as responding with
amazement and wonder at the Spaniards. By seing them as gods, the inhabit­
ants of Asia/America become their creatures. The text, then, would have led
the Spanish spectators of the epoch from the wonder of differences to the
affirmation of their own superiority to the newly found culture.8 Marfa, the
pseudo-goddess, immediately engages in a long relación of the wonders of
Spain, beginning with the affirmation: “Es España la más rica / que en el suelo
se conoce” (185). Balancing the sense of wonder at the riches of the New
2