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  • Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe by Mary E. Barnard
  • Luis F. Aviles
Mary E. Barnard, Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2014. Xiv + 226 pp.

In this book, Mary Barnard explores the impact of material culture in Garcilaso de la Vega’s Neapolitan poems. For Barnard, Garcilaso was a true pioneer in the way he incorporated objects and materiality into his poetry. In Naples, the poet came into contact with a plurality of artifacts and objects that, according to the author, were instrumental in the composition of the Neapolitan texts. The book is divided into an introduction and six chapters, each one documenting multiple examples of how materiality functions in each poem.

The first chapter is dedicated to the study of tapestries in the third Eclogue. Barnard describes the social functions of tapestries and their potential to become exceptional gifts and networking tools. This capacity is also shared by poetry when dedicated as a gift to a powerful and influential patron in the court. In fact, for Barnard, the poem may be understood metaphorically as both a verbal tapestry and a personal letter designed to fortify social bonds with powerful individuals. The second chapter expands the study by focusing on the spectacular series of tapestries entrusted to the Flemish painter Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen and the workshop of Willem de Pannemaker, representing the invasion of Tunis by Charles V (1535). Barnard analyses Garcilaso’s Sonnet 33 and the Latin “Ode to Ginés de Sepúlveda,” both alluding to the Tunis campaign. She concentrates her attention mainly on the interrelations between material sites of history, memory, image-making, and official representation. For the author, Garcilaso is not necessarily writing against the imperial ideology of Charles V, but against the excesses of war and violence. As a result, both poems contradict imperial propaganda by incorporating the effects of extreme violence and the suffering of the enemy, what Barnard interprets as an alternate view of empire.

The focus of Chapter Three is Garcilaso’s famous Ode ad florem Gnidi and its uses of material objects such as the lyre, the viola, Venus’ shell, the marble statue, and enargeia as a rhetorical device that makes vivid the work of representation. Barnard proposes reading the scene of Anaxarete’s transformation by establishing a parallel with public anatomy sessions or illustrations of anatomy treatises available at the time. Part of Chapter Four also explores how materiality has a strong influence on the poetic construction of a subjectivity affected by melancholy. The same can be said of Chapter Four, dedicated to a [End Page 551] close reading of the Second Eclogue. In this composition, Barnard focuses on two material objects, the mirror and the urn. Through the myth of Narcissus, the shepherd Albanio constitutes himself as a melancholic lover unable to understand his own self. Albanio’s intention in the poem is to trap Camila in a game of reflection and deception. However, in the visual encounter, Camila is allowed to resist the visual and gendered performance imposed upon her. Camila becomes a counter figure not only to Narcissus but also to an icon in painting: the woman who looks at herself in the mirror. The second object is a crystal urn celebrating the House of Alba and in particular its third duke, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo. The urn functions as an archive of the noble lineage illustrated by Severo’s narrative. It also displays Duke Fernando’s life as a warrior and lover. Barnard addresses the “crusader” mentality of the duke and the imperial register of the poem, paying close attention to the representation of the different campaigns he participated in. The chapter ends with a return to enargeia and a reflection on language and materiality.

Chapter Five focuses on the relationship between the world and the self under the effects of melancholia. Barnard studies three of Garcilaso’s sonnets (numbers 5, 11 and 13) and his Canción 4. The author organizes her readings of the poems by proposing alternate sources of cultural influence. For example, the submerged nymphs of sonnet 11 may have been influenced by...

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