Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T13:51:02.150Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Garcilaso's Poetics of Subversion and the Orpheus Tapestry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Mary E. Barnard
Mary E. Barnard*
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Orpheus tapestry in Garcilaso's third eclogue is an intertextual construct, a rewriting of the myth through a dismembering and reconstruction of classical and Italian models. Revisionary and corrective, Garcilaso's creative imitation of his antecedents involves a deliberate act of subversion; his text not only remakes its sources but seeks to overcome them. Thus Garcilaso's version of Orpheus and Eurydice rivals its predecessors by its own accuracy of presentation; it depicts exquisite, fragile beauty violently destroyed and a brooding, solipsistic lover deprived of his lyric power. By subverting the ancient artist-magician, Garcilaso appropriates the Orphic power of song for the lyric speaker's self-presentation as poet, providing the speaker, in the process, with a rite of passage into the mythological world of the nymphs. Finally, an elaborate game of voices, anchored on the Orphic, reveals the text both as an artifact and as a product of an act of rewriting.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 102 , Issue 3 , May 1987 , pp. 316 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ariosto, Lodovico. Orlando furioso. Ed. Nardi, Piero. Verona: Mondadori, 1966.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ed. Harari, Josué V. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979. 73–81.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.Google Scholar
Bembo, Pietro, and della Mirandola, Pico. Le epistole “De imitatione” di Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola e di Pietro Bembo. Ed. Santangelo, Giorgio. Firenze: Olschki, 1954.Google Scholar
Bersuire, Pierre. L'Ovidius moralizatus di Pierre Bersuire. Ed. Guisalberti, Fausto. Studj romanzi 23. Roma: La società, 1933.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. L'éspace littéraire. Paris: Gallimard, 1955.Google Scholar
Blecua, Alberto. En el texto de Garcilaso. Madrid: Insula, 1970.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogia deorum gentilium. Ed. Romano, Vincenzo. 2 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1951.Google Scholar
Cabañas, Pablo. El mito de Orfeo en la literatura española. Madrid: CSIC, 1948.Google Scholar
Cain, Thomas H. “Spenser and the Renaissance Orpheus.” University of Toronto Quarterly 41 (1971): 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carducci, Giosuè, ed. Le Stanze, l'Orfeo et le Rime. Firenze: Barbèra, 1863.Google Scholar
Cave, Terence. The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. “Presupposition and Intertextuality.” The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. 100–18.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Il Ciceroniano. Ed. Gambaro, Angiolo. Brescia: La Scuola, 1965.Google Scholar
Fernández-Morera, Darío. The Lyre and the Oaten Flute: Garcilaso and the Pastoral. London: Tamesis, 1982.Google Scholar
Friedman, John. Orpheus in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Gallego Morell, Antonio, ed. Garcilaso de la Vega y sus comentaristas. Madrid: Gredos, 1972.Google Scholar
de la Vega, Garcilaso. Obras completas con comentario. Ed. Rivers, Elias L. Madrid: Castalia, 1981.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Heitmann, Klaus. “Orpheus im Mittelalter.” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 45 (1963): 253–94.Google Scholar
Jenny, Laurent. “La stratégie de la forme.” Poétique 27 (1976): 257–81.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. La révolution du langage poétique. Paris: Seuil, 1974.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. Séméiotikè: Recherches pour une sémanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1969.Google Scholar
Kushner, Eva. “Le personage d'Orphée chez Ronsard.” Lumière de la Pléïade. Paris: Vrin, 1966.Google Scholar
Martial, . Epigrams. Ed. and trans. Ker, Walter C. A. 1919. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Martínez-López, Enrique. “Sobre ‘aquella bestialidad’ de Garcilaso (égl. III.230).” PMLA 87 (1972): 12–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacchi, Mussini, Maria, Pia. “La ‘Orphei tragoedia’ e il suo autore.” In ricordo di Cesare Angelini. Studi di letteratura e filologia. Milano: Saggiatore, 1979. 132–45.Google Scholar
Otis, Brooks. Virgil: A Study in Civilized Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Metamorphoses. Ed. and trans. Miller, F. J. 1916. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1966–68.Google Scholar
Ovide moralisé. Ed. Boer, C. de. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen 37. Amsterdam: Müller, 1936.Google Scholar
Pernicone, Vincenzo. “Sul testo delle opere in volgare di A. Poliziano.” Il Poliziano e il suo tempo. Atti del iv Convegno Internazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Firenze: Sansoni, 1957. 83–88.Google Scholar
Pernicone, Vincenzo. “La tradizione manoscritta dell'Orfeo del Poliziano.” Studi di varia umanità in onore di Francesco Flora. Milano: Mondadori, 1963. 362–71.Google Scholar
Petrarch, . Le familiari. Ed. Rossi, Vittorio and Bosco, Umberto. 4 vols. Firenze: Sansoni, 1933–42.Google Scholar
Pigman, G. W. “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance.” Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poliziano, Angelo. Opere del Poliziano: L'Orfeo et le Stanze. Ed. Neri, Ferdinando. Strasbourg: Heitz [1911].Google Scholar
Porqueras-Mayo, Alberto. “La ninfa degollada de Garcilaso (egloga III, versos 225–232).” Actas del Tercer Congreso International de Hispanistas. México: Colegio de México, 1970. 715–24.Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. La production du texte. Paris: Seuil, 1979.Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. “Syllepsis.” Critical Inquiry 6 (1980): 625–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. “La trace de l'intertexte.” Pensée 215 (1980): 4–18.Google Scholar
Rivers, Elias L., trans. Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain. New York: Dell, 1966.Google Scholar
Sannazaro, Jacopo. Opere. Ed. Carrara, Enrico. Torino: Unione Tipografico–Torinese, 1967.Google Scholar
Segal, Charles. “Orpheus and the Fourth Georgic: Vergil on Nature and Civilization.” American Journal of Philology 87 (1966): 307–25.Google Scholar
Strauss, Walter S. Descent and Return: The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Virgil, . Georgics. Ed. and trans. Fairclough, H. Rushton. 1916. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. “Orpheus the Theologian and Renaissance Platonists.” Journal of the Warburg Institute 16 (1953): 100–20.Google Scholar
Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. London: Faber, 1958.Google Scholar