Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

   

My objective is to understand the treatment of violence in La Araucana, taking into account the different moral burdens that accompanies the representation of violent episodes, such as battles, duels and killings. From here, I review the concept of varietas linked to the classical tradition and the most important epic model for Alonso de Ercilla, Orlando furioso (1532) by Ludovico Ariosto. The body of the article consists of a detailed analysis of the application of varietas in canto VI of the first part of the poem (1569), particularly in its use of different styles to refer, in accordance with decorum, both heroic acts and ungodly and shameful acts in the battle of the slope of Andalicán. The conclusions guide us towards the political objectives of Ercilla, framed in the justice that should prevail in the war of conquest, an aspect that links the poem with the genre of mirrors of princes. At this point, I address the critic controversy surrounding “lo escondido” (I, 4) and connect the aesthetic proposal of La Araucana with the personal ambitions of the young poet in his career as a counselor and diplomat of Felipe II.

What interest can today have to speak of Epic as a literary genre? How far can the norms of a canonical genre be contaminated without undermining it? Virgilio, Ariosto or Tasso incorporate changes that suppose fractures with respect to the Homeric canon. Spanish-American Epic Poetry shows some similar features. The second part of this paper is focused on the revision of the Elegies written by Juan de Castellanos from an article by Karl Kohut, on the one hand, and the biographicalcritical essay Las auroras de sangre (1998), by the Colombian writer William Ospina, who considers the Epic poem from the American side, on the other.

This paper reports the existence of three unknown copies of Quevedo’s Gracias y desgracias del ojo del culo, preserved in the Bilioteca Valenciana and the Biblioteca de Navarra. Bibliographical and textual analysis of the six extant copies confirms that the two with this short title belong to the same edition, allegedly printed in the 17th Century, and one of them was manipulated with the text of a manuscript now lost; on the contrary, the four copies entitled Gracias y desgracias del nobilísimo señor ojo del culo represent four different editions. New copies and editions demonstrate the outstanding difussion of this work through the press. In addition, they invite scholars to reconsider the printed transmission of the work as well as the suggested dates of publication: these cause a critical prejudice that conditions the knowledge of its textual history, due to the lack of authoritative data about the imprint, the paper and the watermark.