Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain (review)

Reviews103 Evangelista.— Gozad, Job santo, de Dios; con Dios, justo Job, quedad. Cubren la choza Job.— En ella vais. Bautista.—¿Dónde iremos? (699-701) El fragmento aparece viciado. ¿A qué se refiere "ella"? Cotejado con el pasaje respectivo de Laspruebas..., vemos que ha de leerse: Evangelista.— Gozad, Job santo, de Dios [Tinpaz], justo Job, quedad. Job.— En ella vais. cubren la choza Bautista.— ¿Dónde iremos? Debiera haber un comentario exponiendo la adulteración del pasaje en B. El profesor Arias coloca las Notas referidas a R, "excepto cuando se indica que son de B" (145). Hubiera sido más conveniente referirlas a B, el texto que saca a la luz, y tener luego otro juego de Notas para aquellos fragmentos de R que se han eliminado en Las probanzas.... B reduce los personajes , prescinde de escenas que daban al auto cierta gravidez intelectual innecesaria. Añade algunos versos al final de la obra que explican mejor el desenlace, en un formato de 1 103 versos, 257 menos que el primigenio. La impresión es pulcra y limpia de erratas. Una excepción es el nombre de Paz y Meliá (34, 35), por Paz y Mélia. En resumen, se presenta una edición útil y fácilmente manejable que ofrece simultáneamente la reimpresión de la príncipe del auto (R) y la nueva versión (B), superior a la anterior. Ángel Valbuena-Briones University ofDelaware Brownlee, Marina S., and Hans Ulrich Gumbrefht, eds. Cultural Authority in Golden Age Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 325 pp. This valuable anthology of 14 essays foregrounds the "dramatic discontinuity " between cultural studies and previous approaches to Golden Age Spain, a break attributed to the influence of postmodern notions of history. Marina Brownlee defines cultural authority in this context as a tripartite 104BCom, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Summer 1997) structure consisting of: 1) orthodox political authority represented through "myths of origin" and "legitimizing historiography," 2) subversive responses to orthodoxy, and 3) the problem ofthe subject — both the authorial subject and the various forms of marginalized subjectivity that are the foci of cultural studies (x-xi). Co-editor Gumbrecht emphasizes the heterodoxy in early modern Spanish cultural production. Marina Brownlee's analysis of the use oí exempta in María de Zayas's novelas as a tool that demythologizes Erasmian humanism provides the basis for her argument that there are important similarities between baroque and postmodern epistemologies. Brownlee's use of the problematic Nietzschean conception of literary cycles, in which baroque movements follow and signal the decline ofperiods ofgreat art, weakens her premise. However , her exploration ofthe ways in which baroque (and postmodern) texts deploy metalinguistic strategies in order to undermine totalizing discourses is an important contribution to the study ofoppositional textual practices. Harry Sieber explores the connections between the "educational revolution " of Renaissance Spain, the genre of courtesy literature, and the representation of the polyphonic nature of honor in picaresque novels. Sieber's article offers significant insights for the ever-popular and controversial field oídramas de honor. In his examination ofgender relations in Garcilaso's Églogas Paul Julian Smith utilizes Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's notion of the importance of the bonds among male rivals, which marginalize the female erotic object. Sedgwick 's expansion of Girardian thought, particularly her analysis ofthe "homosocial " elements of patriarchal cultures, merits serious consideration for studies of gender and the comedia. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's essay contributes to the emergent field of "materialist poetics," which explores the relations between socio-cultural discourses and particular literary techniques. Gumbrecht elaborates the connections between the tensions in Golden Age culture and the lack ofclosure in early modern narrative, and attributes this lack to two competing views oftime: the Renaissance notion ofthe historical vs. post-Tridentine cosmology . The pertinence of Gumbrecht's ideas concerning closure can be seen in the one article in this volume that focuses solely on drama. José Regueiro 's "Textual Discontinuities and the Problems of Closure in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age" (28-50) seeks to displace critical emphasis on Northrop Frye's archetypal comic plot pattern of "order disturbed to order restored." Regueiro points to Iser's notion of textual discontinuities as...