Góngora: Soledades habitadas by Joaquín Roses (review)

127 Reseñas ! ! ! ! ! ineludible si pretendemos entender mejor la Execración contra los judíos, la utilización del material histórico y literario en la obra de Quevedo o la reutilización que hace un autor famoso por ser “literatura” (por citar el manido adagio borgiano). Julio Vélez-Sainz Universidad Complutense de Madrid Roses, Joaquín. Góngora: Soledades habitadas. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2007. PB. 384pp. ISBN: 978-84-9747-195-4. Joaquín Roses’s recent book, Góngora: Soledades habitadas, is a collection of previously published essays, now reprinted in slightly revised version with updated bibliography. Those who have been following Roses’scholarship will welcome the opportunity to have ready access to the corpus of Roses’studies on Góngora, which continue the author’s focus on aspects of the Soledades, the polemic over Gongorism and the trajectory of Góngora’s work. This volume, handsomely bound in paperback by the Thema series of the Universidad de Málaga, is traditional, philological criticism with a transatlantic twist, written in a colorful but exacting style which reminds readers that all of us who study Góngora begin with the model of Dámaso Alonso, who combined erudition with poetic imagination and the gifts of a good teacher. The initial sections of the book, dedicated to the Soledades and the controversy they occasioned, include essays published in homenaje collections organized to mark Robert Jammes’ retirement as well as lesser known material. Roses honors the legacy of Jammes’ work in his elegant close readings of passages of the poem and in his painstaking efforts to establish the chronology and integrity of Gongorine texts as well as the documents of the polemic surrounding them. In this sense Roses develops the scholarly concerns he demonstrated from the beginning in his first book, Una poética de la oscuridad: la recepción crítica de las Soledades en el siglo XVII (Tamesis 1994). The essays on the Soledades proper highlight significant aspects of Góngora’s poetic technique as well as features of structure, imagery, and sources. The first two essays study the four elements and temporal descriptions (cronografía or descriptio temporis) in the work without engaging directly the most recent critical debate over the supposedly allegorical format Góngora was said to have planned for the poem. John Beverley’s scholarship should have been thoughtfully addressed, especially on this point, particularly given Beverley’s extensive and 128 Reviews ! ! ! ! ! early treatment of the issue of temporal structure. The third essay on dramatic elements in the Soledades posits the interesting theory that Góngora’s Comedia venatoria was not unfinished actually, but rather was completed within the Soledades, with the peregrino and other disguised courtiers functioning as character types similar to those of the comedia, as Jammes has suggested. Here Roses’ thesis nicely supports José María Micó’s studies of Góngora’s early work as raw material for the “forge” of the Soledades, but skirts the broader question of generic fragmentation—the emptying out of a sense of generic function—raised by Andrée Collard and Beverley. Roses also draws attention to elements of eclogue in the Soledades, continuing the important and original work of Aurora Egido. In a subsequent essay Roses provides a fine close reading of the peregrino’s soliloquy of II, 112-89, locating its sources in Renaissance eclogue and specifically piscatory eclogue, Petrarchan amorous plaint, and funeral motifs of baroque poetry. This piece is complemented by an essay on the image of the Americas in Góngora’s writing, which includes a close reading of the “Égloga piscatoria en la muerte del Duque de Medina Sidonia,” and which offers additional insight on the “Discurso contra las navegaciones.” The last essay in the section on the Soledades examines variants within the framework of a newer concept of “genetic” textual study, whose goal is not to establish which version of a text its author intended, but rather to study the genesis of a text as a series of versions which give insight into the writing process itself as a creative act. Roses concludes with a stylistic analysis of the types of corrections Góngora made...