Felipe Valencia
My research and teaching focus on the literature and intellectual history of early modern Spain, with an emphasis on poetry, theory of the lyric, and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. My secondary field is colonial Latin America and my work also draws from cultural studies and critical theory. I also serve as the President of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry. In my scholarship, I examine the specifically early modern ways in which the women and men of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Hispanic world forged poetics with materials and interdisciplinary sensitivities distinct from our own. My publications deal with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish lyric and epic poetry, sixteenth-century political tragedy, pastoral, the early works of Miguel de Cervantes, Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana, the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and the prose fiction of María de Zayas. My articles have appeared in Calíope, Hispanic Review, MLN, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, among others.
Currently I am working on a second single-authored monograph, tentatively titled Luis de Góngora and Gongorism: The Hispanic Sublime, where I pursue two goals: an introduction and a theory. With regards to the first goal, my book will provide an up-to-date, accessible, and authoritative introduction to the poetry of Luis de Góngora (1561–1627), arguably the most consequential poet of the early modern Hispanic world; and to Gongorism, the vast body of verse written, on both sides of the Atlantic, in imitation of Góngora’s distinctive style during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and then by Neo-Baroque poets and novelists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With regards to the second goal, my book will offer a theory of what is the project that Góngora and his followers have pursued—thus positing a definition of Gongorism that accounts, as opposed to previous ones, for both the early modern and the modern and post-modern followers of Góngora. I will argue that Góngora and Gongorists have pursued a properly Hispanic language of the sublime, an aesthetic concept first introduced by the Hellenist rhetorician Longinus in On the Sublime and whose relevance for the study of Gongorism was first posited in 1613 by Pedro de Valencia in a private letter to the poet himself. As a sublime poetic language, Gongorism has boldly asserted the power of the Spanish language to represent political power and explore queer and wandering subjectivities; celebrated the power of the poet and poetry; and even claimed for poetry the power to arrive at the truth.
My first book, The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) contends that at the turn of the seventeenth century, partly as a response to the rising prestige and commercial success of epic, partly enabled by the idea of melancholy—which had gained great importance throughout Europe since the late fifteenth century when it came to think about the physical, ethical, social, and political stakes of creativity—several Spanish poets conceived lyric as a melancholy and masculinist discourse that sings of and perpetrates symbolic violence against the female beloved. The Melancholy Void examines the centrality of gender violence and anxieties about feminization in connection with lyric utterance in influential texts such as Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569¬–90), Fernando de Herrera’s Algunas obras (1582), and Luis de Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (1612) and Soledades (1613–17), but also in a lesser-known collection of lyric such as Juan de Arguijo’s Versos (1612) and the pastoral romance La Galatea (1585), the first printed work by Miguel de Cervantes. Through the study of these texts, which offer a wide sampling of styles, themes, and traditions, The Melancholy Void addresses four questions in the scholarship of early modern Spanish poetry: what was the response to and contribution from Spanish poetry to the fledgling theory of the lyric in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe, and what consequences did this turn to theory have for Spanish lyric? How did the rise of Spanish epic at that time affect Spanish lyric? What was the impact on Spanish poetry of the heightened interest in melancholy across Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century, so evident in works from other genres, for instance Don Quijote and El médico de su honra? And last, but not least, what was the role of gender violence and the construction of masculinity in key texts of the Spanish poetic tradition, especially in love poetry?
Supervisors: Mary M. Gaylord, Stephanie Merrim, and Laura Bass
Phone: 435-797-9066
Address: 0820 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322-0820
Currently I am working on a second single-authored monograph, tentatively titled Luis de Góngora and Gongorism: The Hispanic Sublime, where I pursue two goals: an introduction and a theory. With regards to the first goal, my book will provide an up-to-date, accessible, and authoritative introduction to the poetry of Luis de Góngora (1561–1627), arguably the most consequential poet of the early modern Hispanic world; and to Gongorism, the vast body of verse written, on both sides of the Atlantic, in imitation of Góngora’s distinctive style during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and then by Neo-Baroque poets and novelists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With regards to the second goal, my book will offer a theory of what is the project that Góngora and his followers have pursued—thus positing a definition of Gongorism that accounts, as opposed to previous ones, for both the early modern and the modern and post-modern followers of Góngora. I will argue that Góngora and Gongorists have pursued a properly Hispanic language of the sublime, an aesthetic concept first introduced by the Hellenist rhetorician Longinus in On the Sublime and whose relevance for the study of Gongorism was first posited in 1613 by Pedro de Valencia in a private letter to the poet himself. As a sublime poetic language, Gongorism has boldly asserted the power of the Spanish language to represent political power and explore queer and wandering subjectivities; celebrated the power of the poet and poetry; and even claimed for poetry the power to arrive at the truth.
My first book, The Melancholy Void: Lyric and Masculinity in the Age of Góngora (University of Nebraska Press, 2021) contends that at the turn of the seventeenth century, partly as a response to the rising prestige and commercial success of epic, partly enabled by the idea of melancholy—which had gained great importance throughout Europe since the late fifteenth century when it came to think about the physical, ethical, social, and political stakes of creativity—several Spanish poets conceived lyric as a melancholy and masculinist discourse that sings of and perpetrates symbolic violence against the female beloved. The Melancholy Void examines the centrality of gender violence and anxieties about feminization in connection with lyric utterance in influential texts such as Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569¬–90), Fernando de Herrera’s Algunas obras (1582), and Luis de Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (1612) and Soledades (1613–17), but also in a lesser-known collection of lyric such as Juan de Arguijo’s Versos (1612) and the pastoral romance La Galatea (1585), the first printed work by Miguel de Cervantes. Through the study of these texts, which offer a wide sampling of styles, themes, and traditions, The Melancholy Void addresses four questions in the scholarship of early modern Spanish poetry: what was the response to and contribution from Spanish poetry to the fledgling theory of the lyric in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe, and what consequences did this turn to theory have for Spanish lyric? How did the rise of Spanish epic at that time affect Spanish lyric? What was the impact on Spanish poetry of the heightened interest in melancholy across Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century, so evident in works from other genres, for instance Don Quijote and El médico de su honra? And last, but not least, what was the role of gender violence and the construction of masculinity in key texts of the Spanish poetic tradition, especially in love poetry?
Supervisors: Mary M. Gaylord, Stephanie Merrim, and Laura Bass
Phone: 435-797-9066
Address: 0820 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322-0820
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In The Melancholy Void Felipe Valencia examines this reconstruction of the lyric in key texts of Spanish poetry from 1580 to 1620. Through a study of canonical and influential texts, such as the major poems by Luis de Góngora and the epic of Alonso de Ercilla, but also lesser-known texts, such as the lyrics by Miguel de Cervantes, The Melancholy Void addresses four understudied problems in the scholarship of early modern Spanish poetry: the use of gender violence in love poetry as a way to construct the masculinity of the poetic speaker; the exploration in Spanish poetry of the link between melancholy and male creativity; the impact of epic on Spanish lyric; and the Spanish contribution to the fledgling theory of the lyric.
The Melancholy Void brings poetry and lyric theory to the conversation in full force and develops a distinct argument about the integral role of gender violence in a prominent strand of early modern Spanish lyric that ran from Garcilaso to Góngora and beyond.
In The Melancholy Void Felipe Valencia examines this reconstruction of the lyric in key texts of Spanish poetry from 1580 to 1620. Through a study of canonical and influential texts, such as the major poems by Luis de Góngora and the epic of Alonso de Ercilla, but also lesser-known texts, such as the lyrics by Miguel de Cervantes, The Melancholy Void addresses four understudied problems in the scholarship of early modern Spanish poetry: the use of gender violence in love poetry as a way to construct the masculinity of the poetic speaker; the exploration in Spanish poetry of the link between melancholy and male creativity; the impact of epic on Spanish lyric; and the Spanish contribution to the fledgling theory of the lyric.
The Melancholy Void brings poetry and lyric theory to the conversation in full force and develops a distinct argument about the integral role of gender violence in a prominent strand of early modern Spanish lyric that ran from Garcilaso to Góngora and beyond.