Marina S. Brownlee - Böcker

"This is a substantial and readable volume, and it is supplied with a rich array of documentation in the notes and bibliography. It deals with a question of critical importance for current research on medieval `literature': namely, the relationship between this literature and us...This is an important collection, and one may congratulate the editors of their ambitious undertaking."--Paul Zumthor, 'Speculum.'

A seventeenth-century writer of sensationalist short stories, MarÍa de Zayas was a bestselling author, steeped in the novella traditions of Italy and France as well as her native Spain. At the same time, she was an important player in the tabloid craze sweeping over the Europe of her day.Marina S. Brownlee recontextualizes MarÍa de Zayas and provides a reading of Zayas's work from the double perspective of narratology and feminism. In doing so Brownlee explores the complexities of human subjectivity and its representation in the writings of Zayas, who offers provocative assessments of the modern subject and its relationship to gender, and of the woman writer's negotiations with authority and authorship.Zayas's stories question the validity of hegemonic discourses pertaining to public expectations for the citizen, to his or her intimate life, and to the intricacies resulting from any attempt to reconcile the two. Her writing is both daring and original as it reflects developments in contemporary fiction elsewhere in Europe.Brownlee shows that Zayas exploits existing fiction models in highly literary ways and in ways that cash in on the new phenomenon of tabloid publishing, arguing that Zayas is keenly aware of the new readership that resulted from the mass-production revolution in the printing industry and of the private readers' taste for scandal. Finally, Zayas dramatizes the rethinking of the Renaissance exemplum, replacing easy interpretations with Baroque excess-in a text which, like society itself, is an intricate labyrinth that resists easy solutions and limited forms of literary and cultural representation.

This volume of studies in honor of Stephen G. Nichols by colleagues, friends, and students is called Revealing New Perspectives because that is what his career exemplifies. As both the verb and adjective forms suggest, Steve has undeniably changed the course of medieval studies in ways which have had a global impact that continues to be profound.He has always been committed to not only contextualizing the intellectual and artistic production of the past in which a work was created, but to considering it also according to the current theoretical optics of our time, since each age has its own set of aesthetic and cultural realities and expectations.The contributions to this volume by sixteen distinguished medievalists are divided into the five sections of "Visuals," "Lyric," "Philology," "Alterity," and "Rewritings." While it can, of course, be argued that each essay partakes of more than one of these categories, they have been globally organized into the category that predominates in their articulation.***"The breadth of topic and learning in this celebratory volume are a fitting tribute to the remarkable Stephen Nichols. It would be difficult to imagine a more distinguished international array of colleagues, all writing in warm admiration of Nichols’s pioneering influence in manuscript studies, the visual arts, narrative, drama, and lyric in Italian, Iberian, German, Byzantine Greek, and Middle English as well as French. Kevin Brownlee and Marina S. Brownlee have assembled a vital testament to the ‘pathos and passion of philology’ in its most contemporary and medieval senses."—Ardis Butterfield, John M. Schiff Professor of English; Professor of French and of Music, Yale University***"Revealing New Perspectives is a fitting tribute to the pioneering scholarship and ongoing innovation of Stephen Nichols. A volume that includes the fruit of long-standing reflections by some of today’s most eminent medievalists and exciting new work by a number of Nichols’ former students, Revealing New Perspectives offers rich reading for established scholars, and accessible pathways for students to some of medieval studies’ most compelling current issues, including the opportunities for investigation opened up by new technologies and the insights to be gained from engaging with the specificity and complex situatedness of each medieval work." —Daisy Delogu, Professor of French, University of Chicago***"The first thing one notices upon perusing this book is the extraordinary list of contributors, a line-up that befits a celebration of Stephen G. Nichols’s impact on medieval studies. These engaging essays reflect the innovativeness and interdisciplinarity of their honoree’s approach, and, in keeping with the spirit of Nichols’s own work, open up intriguing possibilities for further exploration."—Geri L. Smith, Professor of French and Chair, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Central Florida***"To honor medievalist and comparatist Stephen G. Nichols, this beautifully illustrated book assembles a roll call of skilled literary critics and historians from across the globe. In five sections, sixteen essays probe texts and topics in English, French, German, Iberian, Italian, and Occitan, from the Middle Ages through the mid-twentieth century. The striking breadth and depth—methodological, linguistic, and chronological—pay fitting tribute to Nichols, whose long and distinguished career has stretched the study of medieval poetry through the creation and application of (just for example) material and digital philology."—Jan M. Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard University

This collection of original essays presents new ways of looking at Cervantes’ final novel. Persiles, a work that engages with geopolitical models of race, ethnicity, nation, and religion, takes its inspiration from the highly influential Ethiopian Story (the Aithiopika) of Heliodorus. With particular relevance to the period, the Persiles questions the issue of cultural pluralism in the Spanish empire and emphasizes the need to rethink the radically altered category of lo bárbaro/the barbarian (which included not only the Jew, the Muslim, and the Gypsy, but also the criollo, the mestizo, and the indiano), a new multiracial and multiethnic reality that posed a profound challenge to early modern Spain. The contributors offer a range of perspectives in spatial theory, psychology and subjectivity, visual culture, and literary theory.