FESTIVAL, IMAGE and POETIC VISION in FELIPE III's SPAINS by Mark Evan Davis a DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State Univers
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FESTIVAL, IMAGE AND POETIC VISION IN FELIPE III’S SPAINS By Mark Evan Davis A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Hispanic Cultural Studies—Doctor of Philosophy 2015 ABSTRACT FESTIVAL, IMAGE AND POETIC VISION IN FELIPE III’S SPAINS By Mark Evan Davis In this dissertation, I examine the artistic development and political aspects of works that have received little scholarly attention: epic poems commemorating some of the most important festival events of Felipe III of Spain’s reign (1598-1621). I argue these works are worthy of greater critical consideration than they have so far received, both for their artistic quality and for their substantive reflection of the culture and politics of their era. My interpretative strategy begins with a look at the performative tradition of Spanish political festivals and their iconography from the medieval period. Then, taking an interdisciplinary approach encompassing literature, history and visual culture, I trace the development of the specific imagery of three magnificent occasions and compare it to poetic representations of those events. I pay special attention to the way various poets, including Lope de Vega and Francisco López de Zárate, reflect and incorporate chivalric, classical, sacred and other forms of discourse into their own poetic vision. The visions expressed in these poems, contrary to general opinion, are less calculated to serve as royal propaganda than to further other purposes. Artistic ambition is especially evident in Zárate’s use of innovative baroque language to transform the raw imagery of striking courtly spectacles into something otherworldly. The poets’ political aims range from authorial self-promotion to expressing the interests of various politically influential figures other than the king. What may be most interesting about these pieces in this respect, however, is that the poets also sound notes which are not always in perfect harmony with the tunes being called in the capital, thereby reflecting fissures in the political order of the day. Copyright by MARK EVAN DAVIS 2015 Dedicated to Audrey L. Davis, from whom I inherited a small fragment of her critical spirit, interest in Spanish and above all, a devotion to reading and the life of the mind. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES vii Introduction 1 The purpose of this study 4 My approach 7 Felipe III and his royal festivals 9 Festival epics 12 General outlines of the study 13 Chapter 1 18 The development of the Spanish royal festival and its imagery 18 The politics, forms and functions of royal festivals 18 Old and new: tradition and novelty 33 Fictional fiestas 36 Aragonese developments 39 Fernando de Antequera’s coronation 41 The Fiestas of 1428 45 Alfonso V of Aragon’s Italian triumph 51 The last Trastamaras and royal prestige 54 The Emperor Carlos V’s classical triumphs 57 Felipe II and heraldic imagery 59 The language of festive imagery 61 Chapter 2 63 Courtly splendor, propaganda and heroic poetic form 63 Introduction 63 Epic form and festival writing 74 Historical context and festival imagery 1598-99 82 Aguilar and his poema relación in epic form 86 Lope’s Fiestas de Denia 103 The festival epics of 1598-1599 112 Chapter 3 115 The Duke of Lerma’s temple of fame: politics and poetry in Francisco López de Zárate’s 115 Fiestas en la traslacion (1617) The valido and government by celebration 115 Lerma’s festival of himself 121 Traditional celebration, baroque excess and novelty 129 Interpreting ephemeral events 141 Publishing on the festival of 1617 142 Francisco López de Zárate and his poetry 144 Fiestas en la traslacion and the Baroque 149 Fiestas en la traslacion and baroque desengaño 156 v “La pompa en que deidad ostenta el suelo”: López de Zárate’s poetic liminal 163 space Zárate’s Temple of Fame 166 Neoplatonism and the power of poetry 173 Chapter 4 182 Performance, Portuguese national memory and Castelbranco’s Triumpho del Monarcha 182 (1619) Introduction 182 The importance of the King’s presence 183 The Iberian Union and frustrated Portuguese national aspirations 186 Felipe III and his Portuguese kingdom 194 Portuguese literary patriotism in the Philippine period 196 Portugal celebrates the return of its king 203 The imagery and events of 1619 206 Writing the Jornada de Lisboa 215 Castelbranco’s life and poetic reputation 224 The Triumpho del Monarcha as autonomist epic 230 Castelbranco’s allegorical dream sequence 231 The Triumpho as Castelbranco’s celebration of Portuguese history 236 A prophecy of Portugal’s return to glory 241 Epilogue: Matos de Sá’s “Elegía a la partida de su Magestad” 246 Conclusions 249 Nostalgic festival images 249 The poet’s vision 253 Epilogue 259 APPENDIX 262 WORKS CITED 300 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Arco de los pintores—detail 263 Figure 1.2 Carro de los sastres 264 Figure 1.3 Triumphal car “Lavrea Calloana” 265 Figure 1.4 Tournoi 266 Figure 1.5 Juego de cañas en la Plaza Mayor de Madrid 267 Figure 1.6 Wheel of Fortune 268 Figure 1.7 Griffon 268 Figure 1.8 Revue des heaumes 269 Figure 1.9 De Charles d’Austriche Empereur V 270 Figure 2.1 Figura dos corpos celestes 271 Figure 2.2 Giostra di carosello a cavallo 272 Figure 2.3 Carosel fait à la Place Royalle à Paris le V VI VII avril M DC XII 273 Figure 2.4 Lonja de Valencia 274 Figure 2.5 La expulsión en el puerto de Denia 274 Figure 3.1 Duke of Lerma on Horseback 275 Figure 3.2 Palacio del duque de Lerma 276 Figure 3.3 Lerma 277 Figure 3.4 Archbishop Cristóbal Rojas y Sandoval 278 Figure 3.5 Façade of Collegial Church of San Pedro with Sandoval arms 279 Figure 3.6 Altar del convento de San Agustín 280 Figure 3.7 Altar del convento de Santo Domingo 281 vii Figure 3.8 Caccia di tori—detail 282 Figure 3.9 Composition of Serpents and Saucissons 283 Figure 3.10 Rocket effects 283 Figure 3.11 Another dainty fixed wheel—detail 284 Figure 3.12 Surgere quae rutilo spectas incendia coelo Fernandi succendit amor 285 Figure 3.13 St. George and the Dragon 286 Figure 3.14 His auspiciis vincula rerum Mare laxauit, nec iam terris Vltima Thule est 287 Figure 3.15 Fiat firmamentum 288 Figure 3.16 F. D. Valades inventor—detail 289 Figure 4.1 Et Dilaterauit Leone[m] Quasi Hoedum 290 Figure 4.2 Omne quod est in Mundo 291 Figure 4.3 Haec est victoria 292 Figure 4.4 Evropa prima pars terrae in forma virginis 293 Figure 4.5 Desembarcacion de Sv M. en Lisboa 294 Figure 4.6 Arco de los flamencos—detail 295 Figure 4.7 Arco de los plateros del arbol de los reyes de Portugal 296 Figure 4.8 Arco de los alemanes—detail 297 Figure 4.9 Desembarcacion de Sv M. en Lisboa—detail 298 Figure 4.10 Neptvno sternente fretvm, et felicibvs avstris pvlsvs abit pelago boreas 299 viii Introduction The object of this study is a small selection of long, narrative poems written in the heroic style to commemorate some of the most notable festive occasions of the reign of Felipe III of Spain (1598-1621). To say that these works, which I will call festival epics, have been overlooked by modern scholars would be something of an understatement. Though other aspects of splendid, early-modern celebrations have been picked up and studied carefully in recent years, especially by historians, these poems have generally not been given a great deal of notice—critical attention from literary scholars has been especially scarce. Even when critics have focused on them, more often than not their observations have been of the negative variety. Festival epics have been dismissed for several reasons, including their presumed lack of literary merit, the transitory nature of the events they depict and the money-oriented motivations of their authors. José Ares Montes makes a detailed attempt to review a number of the more outstanding occasional poems dedicated to Felipe III’s royal entry into Lisbon of 1619. His judgment of the quality of the entirety of this writing is harsh, if not entirely consistent. On the one hand, according to the critic, “entre estos productos poéticos, monótonos por repetidos, no existe ni una sola obra de primera categoría” (15). On the other, he sets Vasco Mousinho de Quevedo Castelbranco’s Triumpho del Monarcha Philippo Tercero en la felicissima entrada de Lisboa above the rest, saying Castelbranco uses his resources as an epic poet “con brillantez” (16). While he does not explicitly admit Castelbranco’s poem into that “primera categoría”, neither does he have anything bad to say about the poem. Moreover, though none of the festival epics could really be considered their authors’ best works, they were composed by poets who were almost universally regarded as among the best, like Francisco López de Zárate, Castelbranco and Félix Lope de Vega. This makes the argument against occasional literature for its low quality relatively easy to discard. Literature in other genres is generally 1 judged on its better examples, rather than the large number of lower-quality texts that inevitably make their way into the public. The same principle should apply to occasional pieces. The next two kinds of critiques are a bit stronger. In his appraisal of the same festival epic by Castelbranco, José Maria da Costa e Silva provides one of the more succinct expressions of the problem of writing about ephemeral occasions. Costa e Silva warns poets that an occasional work “vai perdendo o interesse á proporção, que ellas vam esquecendo” and goes on to add that Castelbranco’s Triumpho del Monarcha was also doomed to oblivion because it exalted the visit of a foreign usurper (221).