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 West Indies fleets during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Of particular importance here are the ways…[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.

This chapter is the product of a Keynote Address that Dr. Davis offered at the VII Conference of the Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro which took place at Robinson College, Cambridge, 18-22 julio, 2005. She examines a variety of kinds of early modern Spanish maritime writing (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).

Abstract: This article explores how the abad Maluenda exploited his amateur poetry and vihuela talents, as a way of social promotion in courtly circles also frequented by young Count of Villamediana. This work also sheds some light on the ecdotic entanglement between Villamediana’s and Maluenda’s poems, in connection with the poetry com…[Read more]

Abstract
This article tries to restore the central figure of doña Catalina de la Cerda, lady-inwaiting
of the queen during the first quarter or the 17th Century, consistently
mistaken for other noble women of higher social rank. Nevertheless, this lady
enjoyed an unparallel celebrity at court, due to her beauty and personality, and
became a…[Read more]

In the Laurel de Apolo (1630), Lope de Vega inserts a funeral sonnet for Catalina de la Cerda, a sonnet also contained in a letter addressed «To the Prince». In this article, we will prove that this letter was not addressed to the soon to-be Felipe IV, as Lopian epistolary editors unanimously accept, but to Francisco de Borja y Aragón, Prince of…[Read more]