In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]

In this early article, written in the wake of the publication of Alessandro Martinengo’s _La astrología en la obra de Quevedo_ (Madrid: Alhambra, 1983), Dr. Davis focuses on the astrological tropes in a Quevedo sonnet on the nativity of Christ to see whether this poetic text can shed additional light on the poet’s documented penchant for…[Read more]

Professor Davis’s early article on appropriations of the Indies by Spanish poets who remained in Spain invites us to contemplate a body of poetry that plays the idea of American treasures against the value of true, spiritual riches.

Several of Francisco de Quevedo’s hagiographic poems are puzzling because of their irreverent tone. Edward M. Wilson and Jose Manuel Blecua both noted that “la relacion entre las dos caras de un Quevedo es cuestión difícil y delicada para los modernos;” indeed, the writer’s particular blend of “las burlas con las veras” has attracted attention s…[Read more]

This essay analyzes the work of the poetic function as defined by Roman Jakobson in poems by Francisco de Quevedo that concern themselves with the trope of the rending of the rocks at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross, and in other poetic texts of Quevedo.

The article describes two accounts of Poland and the culture of its people. The first of these dates from 1784 and was written by the Marquis de Ségur, a French diplomat travelling to St Petersburg. The second, from 1840, was written by the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, at the time working as a professor at the Collège de France in Paris. I try t…[Read more]

Bahujan criticism underlines the presence of not only literature of the Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC sections but also Brahmanical and other dwija (upper caste) literature; and it also brings out aspects of their fundamental (social) make-up and their consequences. It interprets entrenched values and aesthetics in various kinds of literature. Thus,…[Read more]

बहुजन आलोचना न सिर्फ़ दलित, आदिवासी व पिछड़ा वर्ग के साहित्य बल्कि ब्राह्मणवादी साहित्य और अन्य द्विज साहित्य की मौजूदगी को भी चिन्हित करती है और उनकी बुनावट के मूल (सामाजिक) पहलुओं और उसके परिणामों को सामने लाती है। विविध प्रकार के साहित्य में विन्यस्त मूल्यों और सौंदर्यबोध की मीमांसा करती है। इस प्रकार यह कई प्रकार के आवरणों, छद॒म…[Read more]