Abstract

This article analyzes the function of Hernán Cortés’ tears in the Historia verdadera by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Some critics have read Cortés’ weeping as a sign of weakness. Actually, the tears of the hero are a manifestation that links the figure of the conqueror —and by extension the whole text— to the classical epic tradition, as well as to an incipient concept of tragedy.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the burlesque style in Martin del Barco Centenera’s epic poem Argentina y conquista del Río de la Plata. In the first place, the notion of «discoursive traditions» is treated to give a wide framing to the text. Then, the concept of heteroglossia is analyzed and commented its use in the poem, regarding the use of anecdotes and three burlesque resources: irony, satire and grotesque. All these features enjoy the poem´s didactic style and intention of the work, becoming a text wich is new somehow to this tradition.

Abstract

The ekphrasis has attracted the recent literary criticism as a key for poetic interpretation. We will check her particular presence in El Bernardo of Balbuena, noted by Frank Pierce, together with La Araucana and La Cristíada, as one of the three great Spanish epic poems. In this baroque poem, the ekphrasis will achieve the greater development in the genre becoming a major articulator of the text. Being a sample of a literary period where the action, the narrative progress, loses relevance in favor to other literary elements, as the descriptive.

Abstract

This essay pretends to demonstrate how two epic poems, Lope de Vega’s Dragontea (1598) and Miramontes’ Armas antárticas (completed around 1609), compete in a verse dual about the collaboration between English privateers and the Panama Maroons and its dangers at the turn of the 16Th century. Despite offering different approaches on this matter, considering the place of enunciation and the direct or indirect knowledge of this colonial reality, both literary works include Maroons in the Christian European history and its continuity in colonial America. Therefore, the introduction in epic literature of the Maroons as a pressure group in the colonial space has per objective to present them as a new heroic obstacle that the power of the Spanish arms (Miramontes) or of the dominant’s speech (Lope and Miramontes) achieves to vanquish and integrate.

Abstract

Marvelous architectures are part of the literary configuration of a group of early modern subgenres among which is the chivalric epic. This study shows how these spaces are especially abundant in El Bernardo in comparison with similar works, and presents its different variants to examine their relevance in diegetic evolution of the poem.

Abstract

The Cadaval 31 codex of the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo and 3693 of the Biblioteca National de Espana are two extraordinary work of art: two epic manuscripts, color illustrated by Jeronimo Corte-Real, their Portuguese author. The poet-painter approach, so original for the medium it uses in comparaison to the rest of the epic production, is perfectly consistent with the enargeia and the visual style of his poems. Text and image share the same rhetoric, serving the figure of the poet artist and humanist, able to shine in every art, so successful in Corte-Real case. This common rhetoric is essential to understand the position of the poet as historian of Portuguese and Spanish wars.