Mujer y Piedra. El mito de Anaxárete en la literatura española by Cristóbal, Vicente (review)

104 Book Reviews D D D D D seem to participate in a broader pattern of recent attempts to revalorize previously marginalized historical figures. We see this trend in both academic and popular historiography, ranging from Henry Kamen’s revisionist portrayal of the Inquisition to the recent Spanish film Juana la loca. Thus Homza represents Spanish confessors as not so scary after all and buys into the theory that “intellectuals invented witchcraft as a heresy” (177). The subtext of these revisionist histories, when taken to the extreme, can read like something out of Politically Correct Bed-Time Stories: the Inquisition was an essentially benevolent institution, witches were not really practicing demonic magic (only “love magic”), priests were never cruel to penitents, and Queen Johanna the Mad was not mad after all. By far the most outrageous example of this tendency is Homza’s suggestion that early modern penitents arrived at the confessional, casuistical manual in hand, ready to argue with their confessors about definitions of sins or their appropriate penance. The only evidence she can muster for this scenario is one Italian confessor’s manual, one Latin treatise translated into Spanish, and one quotation which did originate in Spain but came as late as the eighteenth century. Early modern people may not have been consistent in their outlook, but they were also not always this self-consciously deceptive, manipulative, and complex. Homza herself admits this in the final chapter on witchcraft: she says of “benevolent” Inquisitors that “their decisions should not connote modern sensibilities” (181). Perhaps the supernatural is simply too extreme for her to assimilate to the apparently postmodern mindset she describes. The author seems aware of the danger that her work will be interpreted this way, as she is careful to state in her epilogue that “[t]he first half of the Spanish sixteenth century did not generate a series of proto-modern persons” (210). But such caveats aside, the overwhelming preponderance of her arguments would seem to imply just such a proto-modern—or indeed, postmodern—sensibility. Hilaire Kallendorf Texas A & M University Cristóbal, Vicente. Mujer y Piedra. El mito de Anaxárete en la literatura española. Huelva: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Huelva, 2002. PB. 228 pp. ISBN: 84-95699-44-3. Vicente Cristóbal es ya una de las figuras más justamente prestigiosas en el campo del latinismo dedicado a esclarecer la vigencia de la tradición clásica en nuestras letras. Tras sus estudios sobre motivos Reseñas 105 D D D D D e imitaciones, su reciente monografía pone en esta ocasión de relieve “la inagotable vitalidad de los mitos clásicos”, en una labor donde la claridad no está reñida con la erudición. El estudio se sustenta sobre el rastreo de las fuentes clásicas, sumando a la centralidad de Ovidio textos menos conocidos. Es el caso de Leoncio, de Hermesianacte, las Metamorfosis, tratado en prosa del mitógrafo Antonino Liberal, o la breve alusión en el Erótico de Plutarco. Además de reproducir los textos, Vicente Cristóbal analiza los cambios operados en la conformación narrativa del mito, destacando las razones epocales y genéricas. Bajo ellas pone de relieve la continuidad de una serie de rasgos, sintetizados en el texto consagrado de Ovidio, en particular la contaminación que esta historia manifiesta respecto al género elegíaco, con motivos y situaciones características del género romano y de clara raigambre en la poesía alejandrina, como son el conflicto entre la razón y la pasión, la altivez de la amada, las metáforas de la milicia aplicadas al amor, el recurso de la nodriza como alcahueta, o tópicos como el del paraclausíthyron o motivo del exclusus amator, fragmentos como el discurso de Ifis dirigido a su amada confirman esta conexión con la elegía. Como otros relatos de fuente helenística (Euxinteto y Leucócomas de Teofrasto; Prómaco y Leucócomas de Conón; y, sobre todo, Asandro y Gorgo de Plutarco) Hermesianacte se presenta como probable precedente griego de la elegía romana, con su obra ya anclada definitivamente en...