VISIONS OF ANTIQUITY REMEMBERING THE CLASSICAL PAST IN THE CASTILIAN ROMAN ANTIQUE A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish Literature and Cultural Studies By Clara Pascual Argente, M.A. Washington, D.C. June 22, 2010 Copyright 2010 by Clara Pascual Argente All Rights Reserved ii VISIONS OF ANTIQUITY REMEMBERING THE CLASSICAL PAST IN THE CASTILIAN ROMAN ANTIQUE Clara Pascual Argente, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Emily C. Francomano, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The appearance of the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio in the thirteenth-century Castilian literary scene represents the first time in which the key classical narratives about Alexander the Great, the Trojan War, and Apollonius of Tyre are rendered in an Iberian vernacular language. Both works are traditionally studied against the background of the mester de clerecía, a body of Castilian clerical didactic poems often composed in the same metrical form as the Libros and encompassing different genres such as hagiography, epic, or romance. In this study, I read the Libros from a European rather than exclusively Castilian perspective as part of the generic tradition of the roman antique or roman d’antiquité, vernacular romances recounting some of the central narratives inherited from classical antiquity. The romances of antiquity initially took shape in twelfth-century francophone courts but were copied, read, and reworked in almost every Western European language throughout the Middle Ages. My reading stems from a reconceptualization of the roman antique as a genre primarily concerned with the construction of a collective memory of antiquity, a result of its investment in the larger process of cultural homogenization known as the Europeanization of Europe. I argue that memory is central to the Libros not only in the form of the memorable events recounted in the poems but also as a set of mnemonic strategies necessary to remember them, which the Libros offer to their audience as well. The study explores two fundamental rhetorical techniques of the roman antique, iii ekphrasis and anachronism, as they negotiate the interaction between word and image both within the text and on the manuscript page. In this way, I show how the Libros interrogate the visual and verbal means through which a vernacular cultural memory of antiquity, providing a shared past for the courtly elites throughout the continent, could be successfully created, stored, and transmitted. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been in the making from 1999, when as an undergraduate student I took a course on the Libro de Apolonio taught by Olivier Biaggini. Equally important have been other teachers that, before and after that first encounter with the Apolonio, sparked and maintained my enjoyment of intellectual exchange: Jesús Rodríguez Velasco, Michel Garcia, Jeremy Lawrance, and Lalitha Gopalan have also had an impact on this work. In addition, Simone Pinet and Alejandro Yarza have been extremely patient and generous readers. Most of all, Emily Francomano has not only been a wonderful teacher, advisor, and friend, but also cheerleader and therapist whenever needed. Álvaro Baquero, Jake Cáceres, Sol Miguel-Prendes, Isidro Rivera, Sacramento Roselló and Ana Sáez have (sometimes repeatedly) read or listened to early versions of some chapters and helpfully commented on them. Ricardo Pichel has provided me with bibliographic guidance, as well as with the feeling that someone understood my enthousiasm for some obscure manuscripts. My fellow graduate students, as well as the professors at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown have continuously offered intellectual and moral support for the past six years, without which it would have been impossible to reach this point. During the last few months friends and family have rallied to allow me unlimited time for writing. I am particularly grateful for the time and effort put in by Sagrario Acebes, Pepa Argente, Marta Pascual, and above all Juan Rojo, who has in addition fed me and generally nourished me for quite a few years now. Inés Rojo graciously decided to sleep more or less soundly until I was almost done writing. v The archival research for this dissertation has been supported by a Sigma Delta Pi graduate research grant that allowed me to travel to Spain in the summer of 2008. During that trip, the librarians at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid and the Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial were exceedingly helpful and accomodating. An earlier version of chapter one, also entitled “‘El cabdal sepucro:’ Word and Image in the Libro de Alexandre” will appear in La corónica 38.2 (Spring 2010): 71-98; I am grateful to the editors for their permission to reissue. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 The Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio as Mester de Clerecía Poems........3 The Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio as Romances of Antiquity ............8 Some Impediments to a Reading of the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio as Romans Antiques................................................................................................... 18 The European Roman Antique and Cultural Memory................................................. 29 Chapter One: “El cabdal sepulcro:” Word and Image in the Libro de Alexandre............ 42 The Persian Tombs: Representational Friction and the Artist as Writer...................... 46 Achilles’s Sepulcher: Words, Images, and Mise en Abyme ........................................ 59 Word, Image, and the Memory of Antiquity .............................................................. 67 Chapter Two: From Precarious to Monumental: Using and Transmitting Cultural Memory in the Libro de Alexandre and the Libro de Apolonio ...................................... 74 “Ornamental Overload” and Monumental Memory in the Libro de Alexandre........... 75 Precarious Memory in the Libro de Apolonio ............................................................ 94 A Monumental Frame............................................................................................ 95 Metanarrative Overload....................................................................................... 102 From Memory to Written Record?....................................................................... 114 Chapter Three: Reconsidering Anachronism in the Castilian Roman Antique .............. 119 Critical Approaches to Anachronism in the Roman Antique..................................... 122 Anachronism and the Creation of Memory Places ................................................... 132 “Cuadros de género” in the Libro de Apolonio..................................................... 136 Remembering through Babylon in the Libro de Alexandre................................... 146 vii A Visual Locus Memoriae: Troy in the Crónica Troyana de Alfonso XI .............. 155 “Common Places” and Collective Memory.......................................................... 161 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 163 Appendix: Letter granting permission for the use of previously published material ..... 167 Works Cited................................................................................................................ 168 viii INTRODUCTION Around 1350, in the court of king Alfonso XI of Castile, a magnificently illuminated manuscript was being finished. It contained a prose Castilian translation of the still popular Roman de Troie, composed during the mid-twelfth century by Benoît of Sainte-Maure in a different royal court, that of Henry II Plantagenet and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. The codex’s beautiful illustrations, a total of seventy, invariably depict the wonderful city of Troy in Mozarabic and Gothic architecture, a look that must have been quite similar to the fourteenth-century towns of the rapidly expanding Castilian kingdom. King Alfonso intended to present his son and heir Pedro with the manuscript, probably in the hope that the valuable lessons of the Trojan story would not be lost on the prince. Alfonso XI did not live to see the manuscript finished—he died in 1350 during the siege of Gibraltar. Nor could he have envisioned that the codex would end up having something of a prophetic quality, since, like Troy, the Castilian kingdom would soon be at war. Pedro would fight and lose a war against his half-brother Enrique de Trastámara, son of Alfonso’s lover Leonor de Guzmán. The manuscript, preserved today with the signature h-I-6 in the Biblioteca de El Escorial, is in many respects an exceptional occurrence in Castilian medieval book culture.1 Its spectacular and comprehensive visual rendition of a secular romance is only comparable to a later codex, the fifteenth-century copy of the Libro del caballero Zifar illustrated for king Enrique IV.2 At the same time, this manuscript, known as the Crónica 1 For more information about manuscript h-I-6 and the main critical essays dealing with it, see chapter three of this study. 2 This codex is located at the Bibliothèque National at Paris under the signature manuscript espagnol 36. Literary scholars have been paying increasing attention to its 1 troyana de Alfonso XI, stands as a perfect