Theory vs. the Humanist Tradition Stemming from Américo Castro

“El celoso extremeño” is one of the most widely read tales in Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares. The story—a variation on the tale of the old man with a young bride—has been analyzed in the contexts of the Hispano-Arabic tradition (e.g., Américo Castro) and of the European humanist tradition (e.g., Alban Forcione). This essay attempts to develop a reading that identifies, and comes to terms with, the novella's numerous allusions to the Americas. Three neglected circumstances motivated this reading: “El celoso extremeño” takes place in Seville (the city that enjoyed an official monopoly on traffic between Spain and the New World in Cervantes's time), centers on the government of an isolated community of racially diverse women, and begins and ends with a character's departure for the Indies. The essay speculates that Spain's early colonial experience may have influenced and informed the debates concerning domestic social relations on the peninsula.

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Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman

Religion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation ◽

10.1525/rac.1993.3.1.03a00020 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 29-47 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David Morgan

Keyword(s):

Original Intent ◽

Biographical Research ◽

Authorial Intent ◽

Art Historians ◽

History Of ◽

Humanist Tradition

Traditionally, art historians have relied on iconography, biography, and connoisseurship as the fundamental means of studying images. These approaches and methods stress the singularity of an image, its authenticity, and its authorship; therefore, they reflect an enduring debt to the humanist tradition of individualism. The image is understood principally as the product of the unique and privileged inspiration of an individual artist and is regarded as a measure of this individual's genius. Iconographical and biographical research secure authorial intent; connoisseurship authenticates the work. While this scholarly apparatus certainly offers the art historian indispensable tools, it is important to understand that its commitment to original intent is singularly ill-equipped to assess the reception of images, the ongoing history of response that keeps images alive within a culture from generation to generation.

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David Cast. The Calumny of Apelles: A Study in the Humanist Tradition. (Yale Publications in the History of Art, 28.) New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1981. 63 pls. + XV + 243 pp. $32.50.

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.2307/2860876 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

pp. 239-243

Author(s):

Philipp P. Fehl

Keyword(s):

New Haven ◽

Yale University ◽

History Of Art ◽

History Of ◽

Humanist Tradition

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España en su historia: Cristianos, Moros y Judíos. Américo Castro

Speculum ◽

10.2307/2854168 ◽

1950 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 379-392

Author(s):

A. R. Nykl

Keyword(s):

Americo Castro

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World Literature as a Speculative Literary Totality: Veselovsky, Auerbach, Said, and the Critical-Humanist Tradition

Modern Language Quarterly ◽

10.1215/00267929-8899139 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 82 (2) ◽

pp. 225-251

Author(s):

Ben Etherington

Keyword(s):

World Literature ◽

Close Reading ◽

Distant Reading ◽

Literary Practice ◽

The Face ◽

Humanist Tradition ◽

Literary Experience

Abstract This essay revisits critical-humanist approaches to literary totality that have largely been sidelined during the recent revival of world literature studies. While there has been no shortage of defenses of close reading in the face of distant reading and other positivist approaches, this essay argues that it is precisely the hermeneutic attention to particular works that has allowed critical humanists to think about literary practice within the most encompassing purview. For those in this tradition, “world literature” can never be a stable object but is a speculative totality. The essay discusses three exemplary critical concepts that assume a speculative epistemology of literary totality: Alexander Veselovsky’s “historical poetics,” Erich Auerbach’s “Ansatzpunkt,” and Edward Said’s “contrapuntal reading.” Each, it is argued, is grounded in the distinctive qualities of literary experience, a claim for which Theodor Adorno’s account of speculative thinking serves as a basis.

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