The Unrecognized Precursors of Montemayor's Diana - Hardcover

Rhodes, Elizabeth

9780826208187: The Unrecognized Precursors of Montemayor's Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826208185 ISBN 13: 9780826208187

Publisher: Univ of Missouri Pr, 1992

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Jorge de Montemayor was one of the most popular and influential writers of the Spanish Golden Age. Author of the Diana, Spain's first pastoral narration, Montemayor was among the most published authors of his time and had among his followers such important writers as Miguel de Cervantes, Honore d'Urfe, and Sir Philip Sidney.
In this radical reevaluation of the Diana, Elizabeth Rhodes proposes to bring Montemayor's writings, and those ideologically similar to them, closer to the modern reader by redefining and exploring the context in which his book was conceived and universally applauded. Rhodes challenges the traditional critical approach to the Diana by removing Montemayor's works from the shadow of the classical and humanistic traditions to reexamine them in the broader context of the spiritual environment in which Montemayor lived and wrote. Renaissance scholars have long ignored Montemayor's devotional writings when analyzing the Diana, but Rhodes reveals how the author's religious vision illuminates his pastoral narration and provides the missing link between his works and the acclaim they earned from his contemporaries. She examines the Diana in its full historical and cultural contexts and acknowledges Montemayor's religious works as the unrecognized precursors of his Diana.
This reinterpretation harmonizes the Diana with its author's other writings and accounts for issues left unresolved by previous approaches to the text. It also explains the book's extraordinary success in its own day and the multitude of imitations it inspired, as well as modern readers' difficulties in appreciating it.
The Unrecognized Precursors of Montemayor's Diana will be of interest to specialists in Golden Age Spanish literature, as well as to classical and Renaissance scholars dedicated to the study of the pastoral, early modern forms of narrative, and the relationship between religious writing and fiction.

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