"Echado de tierra": Exile and the Psychopolitical Landscape in the 'Poema de mio Cid' (review)

280ReviewsLa coránica 29A , 2000 Sears, Theresa Ann. "Echado de tierra": Exile and the Psychopolitical Landscape in the 'Poema de mio Cid'. Newark, Delaware: Juan de Ia Cuesta, 1998. Pp. 123. ISBN 0-936388-10-2 The first line of the Acknowledgments of this little study implies immediately the principal difficulty that one finds here. "Although I have bee [sic] reading and studying the Poema de mio Cidfor many years now, the particular focus that I have elaborated here has developed fairly recently." No, we encounter here no radically new theory ofreading medieval texts - "reading like a woman, reading like a man, reading like a whatever." This is simply a typo. There are almost no further typographic errors of this sort in the book. What the reader does encounter is a rather strangejuxtaposition ofextremely interesting insights and interpretationsjuxtaposed against what are on occasion almost simplistic asseverations which would never have been made had the author familiarized herself a bit more with recent scholarship on the poem. The themes of exile and loss are obviously central ones in the Poema de Mio Cid. What Sears has done is to apply the "psychoanalytical" approach in order to explain better how these concepts function and develop in the work and for doing this she is to be commended. The field ofmedieval Hispanic studies has not been one particularly noted for its interest in the newer methods ofcritical commentary and analysis. "Back in the fifties tonight" has been and continues to be the guiding philosophy for the great majority who write about the works in our area. In her first chapter Sears studies the implication of exile utilizing the ideas ofa number ofcritics and writers ranging from Gloria Anzaldúa's novelistic treatment in Borderlands through more philosophical treatments of the subject by Edward Casey and Mae Henderson. What she does not do is refer to suggestions made by bothJohn Burt and Michael Gerii that biblical themes of exile must in some fashion inform the structure of the poem. The dramatic force ofXimena's prayer demonstrates, I think, beyond any shadow ofa doubt that paradigms from Scripture must be offundamental importance in the PMC IfSears believes otherwise , it is incumbent upon her to argue her case. Her second chapter is concerned with the transformation that occurs as the hero moves from being an outcast to becoming a heroic exemplar. One of her principal ideas is that the physical body of the Cid replaces that of the King (41, 44). Her reference to the King's "unchanging static body" (41) needs further explanation. What precisely is "static" about Alfonso? Doubtless Kantorowicz's monumental opus on The King's Two Bodies would be of help here. La corónica 29.1 (Fall, 2000): 280-282 Reviews281 She makes the interesting suggestion on page 50 that there may be a play of sound patterns in the poem based upon the c-cedilla (voiceless affricative in the era) in the Cid's name. Critics have become increasingly aware of the importance ofadnominatioand related linguistic phenomena in the Middle Ages. The idea that the very name of the chief character may be a kind of centering piece in sound is a good one. On page 54 she interprets the "ojos velidos" of the Cid's two daughter's as they gaze out upon Valencia as meaning "the women must shade their eyes" (and then adds as a "cute" touch: "sunglasses not having been invented"). Everyone else seems to believe that "vel(l)idos" means "beautiful" (see Colin Smith's edition, 157). At the end of the chapter I have some unease with her descriptive usages. Can the Cid's daughters really be described as "avatars of the land" (58) and should the Corpes episode really be termed an "antiphon to the Valencia prospect" (59) . In the latter case I suppose that she means that she sees the Corpes episode as a "response" to what happens in Valencia. But liturgically (and again the Cid and his family were churchgoers) an antiphon is typological in nature. It generally precedes as well as follows and thus both alludes to and confirms the meaning ofwhat is present in the central text. The following...