Introduction

I N T R O D U C T I O N M a r i a Cristina Q u i n t e r o Bryn M a w r College For a poet whose name and its derivatives have always been associated with obscurity and impenetrability, Luis de Gongora y Argote continues to enjoy significant visibility and presence at the new turn of the century. In the past fifteen years alone, his work has merited several new editions by Antonio Carreira, Robert Jammes, and Laura Dolfi, among others. New translations into English by Michael Smith and Philip Polack have appeared, as well as a new edition of Damaso Alonso's classic study Gongora y el 'Polifemo.' Furthermore , a respectable number of articles are published every year alongside important book-length studies such as Kathleen Hunt Dolan's Cyclopean Song: Melancholy and Aestheticism in Gongora's 'Fdbula de Polifemo y Galatea', or Marsha Collins's The Soledades, Gongora's Masque of the Imagination. On occasion, Gongora even enters mainstream consciousness as in a recent New York Times Magazine advertisement for a furniture company. The advertisement features, as part of the decor for an elegant bedroom, a handsome red book (perhaps Picasso's drawings inspired by Gongora) that bears the name of the poet clearly visible in gold on the spine. That Gongora could simultaneously be the subject of serious scholarship and an "object" of decoration would perhaps not have surprised his contemporaries. Gongora was nothing if not a figure of contradictions with an infinite capacity to occupy diverse poetic spaces: from the rarefied pastoral landscapes of the Soledades, to the sensual mythological setting of Polifemo, to the scatological shores of the Rio Esgueva. Ever since the virulent controversy over the "intolerable oscuridad" of his two most famous poems, several versions of the poet have competed for our critical attention. The eight essays offered in this special volume of Caliope are representative of the multiform genius of the poet and the variety and vibrancy of Gongora studies at the beginning of the 21st century. The contributors, all well known and respected critics of early modern Spanish literature (although not all of them primarily gongoristas), approach the work of the Cordoban poet from a multiplicity of perspectives and methodologies: from time-honored philological analysis to feminist readings, from considerations of myth to the application of queer theory. Underlying this diversity in theoretical approximation and CALfOPE Vol. 8, No. 1 (2002): pages 13-17 14 so Maria Cristina Quintero modes of reading, we discover the extent to which the Gongorine canon has expanded in recent decades. Alongside the Petrarchan love sonnets and the Soledades and Polifemo, we now study—and, on occasion, teach—formerly overlooked aspects of Gongora's work including his theater, his scabrous verse (even at its most obscene), and his politics. The organization of this collection does not follow a specific design . Nonetheless, I thought it appropriate for personal reasons to begin with the essay written by Gonzalo Sobejano. It was, in fact, Prof. Sobejano who first introduced me to the serious study of Gongora some twenty years ago when I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. In his contribution to this volume, Sobejano studies the profound impact that Gongora had on Baltasar Gracian. Not only is Gongora quoted numerous times in Agudeza y arte de ingenio as the preeminent example of elegance and wit, but there are also clear Gongorine echoes in the allegorical novel El criticon. Sobejano offers an explanation as to why Gracian never quotes from the Soledades and only briefly from the Polifemo in Agudeza, as opposed to the letrillas, romances, sonnets and even his plays which feature prominently. In what becomes an exemplary display of three levels of ingenio and agudeza, Sobejano reads Gracian reading Gongora. Furthermore, the author reminds us in his article of the enduring pleasure of uncovering the rhetorical underpinnings of a Gongora poem. Laura Dolfi, who for a number of years has pioneered the study of Gongora's theater, provides here a useful introduction and overview of this, the least-known aspect of the poet's oeuvre. Her meticulously prepared editions of Las firmezas de Isabela, El...