The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics

184 Pages·2009·1.22 MB·English

by  William Egginton

The TheaTer of TruTh

The Theater of Truth
the ideology of
(neo)baroque aesthetics
William Egginton
stanford university press
Stanford, California 2010
Stanford university Press
Stanford, California
©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the
Leland Stanford Junior university
all rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without
the prior written permission of Stanford university Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
egginton, William.
The theater of truth : the ideology of (neo)baroque aesthetics /
William egginton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-6954-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Spanish literature—Classical period, 1500–1700—
history and criticism. 2. Baroque literature—history and
criticism. 3. Spanish american literature—20th century—
history and criticism. 4. Truth (aesthetics). 5. aesthetics,
Modern. I. Title.
pq6066.e39      2010
860.9'1—dc22  2009022164
Printed in the united States of america
on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Typeset at Stanford university Press in 10/13.5 Galliard
For Sebastian

Acknowledgments
This book was made possible by a leave generously granted by the univer-
sity at Buffalo and its Department of romance Languages and Literatures,
for which I thank Maureen Jameson, uday Sakahtme, Charles Stinger, and
Martha Malamud in particular, and by the Johns hopkins university, for
which I thank deans adam falk, David Bell, and Gregory Ball. Thanks are
further due to my editors at Stanford university Press, especially Norris
Pope, emily-Jane Cohen, Sarah Crane Newman, and John feneron; to
Julio Baena and Marina Brownlee for making the book better; to Ludwig
Nagl and the Institut für Philosophie at the university of Vienna and to
elisabeth Bronfen and Christian Kiening at the university of Zürich for the
invitation to present some of the ideas developed here to a broader audi-
ence; to Cristina Moreiras for the invitation to present an earlier version of
chapter two at the colloquium she organized at the university of Michigan
in 2005; to Christian and eva of Café Phil in Vienna for the perversely ethi-
cal book presentation and the office away from home; to Gregg Lambert
for the consistently enriching exchange of ideas; to Kevin heller for edit-
ing and advice, and to replace thanks elsewhere neglected; to David Cas-
tillo, for eternal collaboration and friendship, as well as for the invitation
to write for his and Massimo Lollini’s issue of Hispanic Issues; to Nicholas
Spadaccini and Luis Martín-estudillo, for their kind invitation to take part
in the Hispanic Issues Baroque/Neobaroque symposium at the university of
Minnesota, and to the rest of the participants of that conference for the ex-
cellent exchange of ideas; to Joachim Küpper for the invitation to present
chapter five at the freie universität in Berlin, and to Meg Greer for bring-
viii Acknowledgments
ing me to Duke university to present chapter four; to Sepp Gumbrecht for
continuing to be the best of friends as well as teachers; to robert harrison
for surviving and being an inspiration for me and so many others; to David
e. Johnson and Lisa Block de Behar, for making me think about Borges
even more; to Galen Brokaw, for unwavering support and for broaden-
ing my horizons; to Bob Davidson, for always opening up new horizons
for thought and conversation; to eduardo González for inspiring conver-
sations; to Stephen Nichols for his leadership and keen intellect; and to
all my colleagues at the Department of German and romance Languages
and Literatures at the Johns hopkins university, for their welcome and
for providing me a new intellectual home. I would also like to pay special
regard to my graduate students at the university at Buffalo, at Cornell,
and at Johns hopkins, who have been consistent sounding boards for the
ideas and arguments I present here. If it is a truism that one never works in
a vacuum, it is doubly true in my case, where even in the seclusion of my
home and office my thoughts are continually inflected and infected by the
extraordinary world of knowledge my wife, media theorist and filmmaker
Bernadette Wegenstein, brings in and radiates out. her presence ensures
that, no matter how distant the time period I am considering, I never let go
of its relevance to the present.

earlier versions of chapters one and two were published respectively
as “of Baroque holes and Baroque folds,” in Hispanic Baroques: Read-
ing Cultures in Context, ed. Nicholas Spadaccini and Luis Martín-estudi-
llo, Hispanic Issues 31 (2005): 55–71, and “The Baroque house of reason
(Cervantes, Master architect),” in Reason and its Others, ed. David Castillo
and Massimo Lollini, Hispanic Issues 32 (2006): 186–203. a translation of
the latter into Spanish by Virginia Gutierrez appeared in Insula (2006). an
earlier version of chapter five has appeared as “The Corporeal Image and
the New World Baroque,” in Latin America, in Theory, ed. David e. John-
son, South Atlantic Quarterly 106.1 (2007): 107–29, copyright 2007, Duke
university Press, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher. a shorter
version of the introduction was published as “The Baroque as a Problem
of Thought,” PMLA 124.1 (2009): 143–49, and is reprinted here by permis-
sion of the copyright owner, The Modern Language Association of America. I
am grateful to these publications for permission to use this material.
Contents
    Introduction: The Baroque as a Problem of Thought 1
1. of Baroque holes and Baroque folds 11
2. how to Build a Baroque house (Cervantes, Master
architect) 26
3. The Theater of Truth 39
4. The opacity of Language and the Transparency of Being:
on Góngora’s Poetics 56
5. The Corporeal Image and the New World Baroque 69
6. The Dream Life of Calderón and Borges 85
  7. The World Well Dressed: The Later Cinema of
Pedro almodóvar 107
    epilogue: a New Distinction 127
Notes 131
Works Cited 149
Index 163