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]

This article examines two important texts of Teresa de Jesús, El Libro de la vida and Las moradas del castillo interior, to take a new look at an old debate about whether Santa Teresa’s written expression is “spontaneous” or whether it is in fact more literary. Dr. Davis arrives at the conclusion that the writer’s works are both more indebted to…[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]

Using the transatlantic relación of Diego Portichuelo de Ribadeneyra (1657) as an example, this essay tracks some of the ways in which several religious passengers narrated their experience crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the Spanish Indies fleets during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Of particular importance here are the ways in…[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.

On the example of “The Walking Dead”, we demonstrate in how far the reception of pop culture narratives can serve not merely trivial entertainment, but epistemological interest as well. For this purpose, we introduce the term pop cultural secondary worlds and formulate the thesis that these can be used analogously to thought experiments. The…[Read more]

This book discusses advances in the dairy industry in various parts of the world. It is divided into four sections on “Dairy Technology”, “Reproductive Biotechnology”, “Entrepreneurship Development”, and “Sustainable Development”. Chapters address such topics as regional dairy breeds, farming innovations, mineral nutrition, folliculogenesi…[Read more]