Lacayo de risa ajena. El Gongorismo en la “Fábula de Polifemo” de Alonso de Castillo Solórzano by Rafael Bonilla Cerezo (review)

125 RESEÑAS ! ! ! ! ! Throughout the book, Banner offers an implicit challenge to the boundaries between what scholars generally consider the sacred and the secular, providing insight into the complex motivations underpinning religious patronage in post-Tridentine Spain. The Religious Patronage of the Duke of Lerma will thus be important for readers interested in artistic patronage under Philip III, and for those seeking greater knowledge of sacred art during the period. Tanya J. Tiffany University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Bonilla Cerezo, Rafael. Lacayo de risa ajena. El Gongorismo en la “Fábula de Polifemo” de Alonso de Castillo Solórzano. Colección de Estudios Gongorinos 9. Córdoba: Diputación de Córdoba, 2006. PB. 320 pp. ISBN: 84-8154-171-0. Over the past two decades, and most notably since the early 1990s, there has been increased scholarly interest in the Polyphemus myth in Spanish GoldenAge poetry. Though most of this interest has focused on formal analysis and literary sources of Luis de Góngora’s Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (ca. 1613), Rafael Bonilla Cerezo’s book stands out for examining a subsequent poetic version of the Polyphemus myth: the mordantly parodic Fábula de Polifemo (1624) written by Alonso de Castillo Solórzano (1584-ca. 1648). Castillo is acclaimed for his picaresque narratives such as La niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares (1634) and Las aventuras del Bachiller Trapaza (1637), but his first publication, the two-volume Donaires del Parnaso (1624 and 1625), is a collection of humorous verse that has received little scholarly attention. It is this work in which the Fábula de Polifemo first appears. Known among gongoristas for his study Lenguas de templado fuego: el Gongorismo en la Narrativa del Siglo XVII (Córdoba: U de Córdoba, 2006), Bonilla explores the impact of Góngora’s verse on the poetry of Castillo, and specifically on his Polifemo. Bonilla’s book not only explores the poem’s formal techniques and structural elements, but also investigates its literary influences, both immediate and remote. Additionally, Bonilla discusses the circumstances of the poem’s production and publication and offers a carefully documented edition 126 REVIEWS ! ! ! ! ! of the poem itself. This book, however, provides more than a muchneeded study of the sources and poetics of Castillo’s Polifemo: it examines modulations of the Polyphemus myth throughout literary history, and particularly in connection with the development of culteranismo in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish verse. In his Introduction, Bonilla discusses the rise and development of the Polyphemus myth in literature, from the classical authors (Euripides, Homer, Lucian, Ovid, Theocritus, et al.) to the Renaissance and Baroque translators and poets (Ariosto, Bustamante, Castillejo, Góngora, Stigliani, et al.), right up to the composition of Castillo’s Polifemo. One of the remarkable features of this section of the book is the level of detail with which Bonilla shows the complex chain of literary production and influence that connects Góngora—and, effectively, Castillo—with classical, Italian, and Spanish literary forebears. Bonilla uses several grids to illustrate chronologies and reception trajectories related to the transmission of the Polyphemus myth in the poetic tradition. In one grid, for example, the author parses specific episodes from classical texts in order to demonstrate the process of creation and reception, including the selection and exclusion of material, that characterizes the myth’s literary heritage accessible to Góngora and his contemporaries. Though the grids do not always convey their meaning and purpose with maximum clarity, they nevertheless help the reader visualize Polyphemus’s journey from ancient literature through Spanish Golden Age poetry. As part of his examination of the literary ancestry of Castillo’s Polifemo, Bonilla takes on scholarly issues regarding Góngora himself. Consistent with his portrayal of the multinodal nature of the Polyphemus canon, Bonilla believes that Robert Jammes’s Études sur l’oeuvre poétique de Don Luis de Góngora y Argote (1967) overstates the level of impact that Ovid’s Metamorphoses had on Góngora’s work. Instead, Bonilla casts his own approach to Góngora’s Polifemo more within the tradition of Antonio Vilanova’s Las fuentes y los temas del Polifemo de Góngora (1957).As a...