Thomas à Kempis wrote that everyone desires peace but not the things that make for peace. Such a universal desire would be a hopeful sign, a foundation to build on as we contemplate (and, no doubt, debate) “the things that make for peace.” I offer as murder is to crow as a record of “perchings” in my contemplation of things that make for peace.…[Read more]

Garcilaso de la Vega’s “Ode ad florem Gnidi” reflects the poet’s heightened interest in classicism that marked his final years in Naples. This article traces the role of classical theories of visualization in the ode. I argue that the poem’s self-conscious artifice suggests that its primary audience was the community of classicists that Garcilaso…[Read more]

This article considers the relationship between allegorical personification and literary subjectivity in Miguel de Cervantes’s Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (1617). Although previous scholarship has recognized the allegorical qualities of the character Clodio, a slanderer par excellence, these qualities have been seen as incompatible w…[Read more]