Poetry as Play: Gongorismo and the Comedia (review)

Reviews279 by competing values such as honor, love, jealousy, fealty to liege lord, revenge and destiny are difficult to unravel. The difficulty is due not only to the impossibility of separating conflicting claims but also to the fact that present-day readers cannot establish with confidence the hierarchy of values that controls the actions of the personages. If we forego a religious interpretation, what importance did this society attach to each of these values and which did they consider more important? The approval or condemnation that they assigned to one or another action depends totally on their world view. We can, of course, come to our own conclusions regarding the propriety of their decisions but we cannot feel certain of their correctness. Golden Age plays depend on the conflict brought about by competing social and moral values to create draniatic tension and provoke the interest of spectators. Personages find themselves on the horns of a dilemma from which they hope to extricate themselves with their moral values and social positions intact. Al of their efforts are directed toward this task and very often they fail in their attempt. They fall short of their goals not only because they are incapable of balancing contradictory demands but also because what they are trying to achieve may not be possible at all. However, if we are ever to come to an understanding of these plays, it is important that they be considered as individual constructs, each carrying its own meaning, and not as a related whole. This approach will undoubtedly result in contradictory interpretations from one play to another but it will safeguard the integrity of the individual work. Frank P. Casa The University of Michigan Quintero, María Cristina. Poetry as Play: Gongorismo and the Comedia. Purdue University Monographs in Romance Languages 38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1991. xviii + 260 pp. Cloth. $69.00. Paper. $24.95. In Poetry as Play, María Cristina Quintero explores the dynamic dialectic between poetic discourse and dramatic convention in Golden Age theater, focusing on the impact of el estilo culto or gongorismo on the comedia. She argues that the incorporation ofpoesía culta into drama opened up the comedia to increased self-referentiality and engagement with the principal literary polemics of the day. Anyone interested in Golden Age poetry or theater will find this important and well-written book informative and stimulating reading . Chapter 1 examines some of the many poetic traditions that converge in the 280BCom, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter 1992) comedia—the romancero, Petrarchism, and gongorismo. Quintero treats the complex issue of the imitation of models with sophistication, recognizing that the comedia's varied accommodation tactics ranged from straightforward, even laudatory adaptation to ironic, parodie lampoon. The author analyzes the inherent theatricality of Golden Age poetry in Chapter 2, including such topics as oral presentation of poetry at academies, the encoding of personae and audiences into texts, and the foregrounding and transformation of the conceit into a dramatic performer. She illustrates the comedia's exploitation of the propensity for spectacle present in poetic praxis, particularly in the reification of metaphor onstage. In Chapter 3, Quintero approaches the famous rivalry between Lope and Góngora from a different and insightful perspective. She stresses the creative results of their parodie engagement with established genres and each other, pointing out that both literary giants challenged the canon with unorthodox, innovative ideas. By emphasizing similarities and areas of mutual influence between Góngora and Lope, Quintero has increased our knowledge of these two artists and of the evolution of dramatic discourse in Golden Age theater, and has provided new venues for scholarly investigation. With the exception of Robert Jammes' Etudes sur l'oeuvre poétique de Don Luis de Góngoray Argote (1967), Góngora's theater has long remained a somewhat mysterious, major gap in critical studies of the poet. Chapters 4 and 5 of Poetry as Play, which address Góngora's plays Las firmezas de Isabela (1610) and the unfinished El doctor Carlino (1613) respectively, constitute a major contribution to our understanding of Gongorine aesthetics and successfully bridge that gap. Quintero rightly considers the plays experiments in which the poet combines lenguaje culto with...