Graduate Student, Romance Languages and Literatures
Spanish TA/Instructor
SUNY at Buffalo
Thesis Title: Social Illness Embodied: Pícaros, Converts and Free Women in the Literature of the Golden Age
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David Castillo
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About
My research derives from the use of the theatrical works of honor of Lope de Vega and Calderón de la Barca as propagandistic and exemplary means to preserve conservative ideals within Spanish baroque society, through its use of the body metaphor as a political model. Theatrical works, as well as picaresque literature, are implied means of treating metaphorical social illness by entering into literary discourse, as seen through the conservative hegemonic perspective of the epoch in question. I view the pícaro from a marginalized perspective, within baroque society, and employ him or her, as well as baroque theater, as a platform from which I launch a cultural study related to the use of metaphor and the social body. In short, this project aims to refute the current line of thought that the social body of The Baroque was viewed in metaphorical terms, but rather it was an actual tool employed in an effort to subdue and control a society in crisis. Or, in the writings of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, it became a “Metaphor We Live By”. In much the same way that medical, political and religious treatises enter into discourse in an effort to resolve the social crisis of the Spanish Baroque, theater and the picaresque make attempts at rectifying social illness through the use of medical terminology as it relates to the body. After displaying how these treatises are connected to an extensive history of perception of society as a metaphorical body stemming from antiquity’s political and medical philosophy (namely Galen and Tacitus), an analysis is made of baroque literature as it relates to the metaphor. More specifically, my research targets how the conservative hegemonic perspective –through the use of medical vocabulary- targets marginalized figures as an illness within the social body. The uniqueness of the project lies within the breadth of literary works analyzed in an effort to expound upon the deep seeded manner in which the social body metaphor had taken root, and in the refutation of the metaphor as an actual metaphor. Additionally, this field of research as it relates to medical and anatomical history with the marginalized figure in literature is sure to be of interest for future studies across literary genre’s as they relate to metaphorical concepts.
Each of the three chapters of this dissertation examines illness of the social body from a varying aspect according to what and how the “unwanted” members of the body are viewed through literary discourse in the epoch. Central to each chapter’s argument is the use of medical and anatomical terminology as it relates to the use of the social body as a literal tool used to explain, expound upon and cure illnesses within the social body. Chapter one examines blood illness as it relates to purity of blood within Inquisitorial Spain. In this chapter I examine how illness is inherently tied to Spain’s overwhelming preoccupation with blood and religious ideology through analyses of Calderón’s El Médico de su honra, Lope’s Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña and Fuenteovejuna, and the picaresque works of Mateo Alemán, Francisco de Quevedo and the anonymous work Lazarillo de Tormes. In chapter two a focus is given to the illness of crime within the social body, with a heavy emphasis of the picaresque literary figure as the representation and literal incarnation of all marginalized figures within the body. In addition to the previously mentioned picaresque works I also closely examine Cervantes’s Pedro de Urdemales and El Licenciado Vidriero. The final chapter of the dissertation highlights the “Free Women” illness within the social body metaphor. Primary works for this chapter include La Pícara Justina by Lopé de Úbeda, María de Zayaz’s Desengaños Amorosos and Cervantes’s El Coloquio de los Perros and El Viejo Celoso as well as other works from his Entremeses. The focus of this chapter aims to present the microscopic manner in which the female body was managed as it related to medical and anatomical terminology of the period.
