City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2018 Aurality as Methexis and the Rise of Castilian Literature: The Case of the Siete Partidas Maristela Verastegui The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2467 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] AURALITY AS METHEXIS AND THE RISE OF CASTILIAN LITERATURE: THE CASE OF THE SIETE PARTIDAS by MARISTELA VERÁSTEGUI A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 MARISTELA VERÁSTEGUI All Rights Reserved ii Aurality as Methexis and the Rise of Castilian Literature: The Case of the Siete Partidas by Maristela Verástegui This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _________________ __________________________________________ Date Marithelma Costa Chair of Examining Committee ___________________ __________________________________________ Date Fernando Degiovanni Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Lía Schwartz Ottavio DiCamillo Juan Carlos Mercado Jesús Rodríguez Velasco THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Aurality as Methexis and the Rise of Castilian Literature: The Case of the Siete Partidas by Maristela Verástegui Advisor: Marithelma Costa Participation is the engine of cultural production. In the case of literature, the privileged modality that enables participation is auditory perception. In order to articulate a theory of literary cultural production based on auditory perception, participation needs to be analyzed in the context of Platonic methexis, understood as an embodied experience facilitated by brain mechanisms of sensory processing and cognition, which manifest in specific ways in written texts. The Siete Partidas, the first complete and systematic legal code of the Western World, provides the perfect case study to test a theory of literary cultural production based on methexis via auditory perception, because it is one of the first complete texts written in Castilian, making it ideal to illustrate the ways in which methexis affects the process of elaboration of a cultural product in a language that does not have a precedent in the form of an extensive body of texts, nor has it had time to develop a normalized system of grammar and rhetoric. iv For Daniela, Francisco and Rosario In loving memory of Juan Guillermo Ramírez Arango v Table of Contents 1. Sound 2 From Wave to Sound 10 Things that Sound 14 Things We Hear 18 The Mystery of Our Ears 21 Winding Paths 27 (Not So) Perfect Pitch 32 Thinking Out Loud 37 It All Boils Down to Timbre 39 Focus on sense 41 2. Methexis 43 Methexis 45 The Text and the Brain 53 Rewarding Experiences 55 Life is Flux 69 Through the Looking Glass 78 A unified framework 87 vi 3. Aurality 94 Aurality (Un)Defined 96 Medieval Ears 107 Listening to Plato 109 Aristotle, the Soul and the Ear 117 The Commentary Tradition 128 Medical Tradition: from Antiquity to Avicenna 134 After Avicenna: Reconciling Aristotle and Religion 142 Contemporary Debates 148 4. Experience 153 The case study 155 Aurality 158 Voice 167 Affect 188 Jurisdiction and Relative Positioning 209 Back to Methexis 228 Bibliography 233 vii List of Illustrations Figure 1. Sine Wave 14 Figure 2. Harmonics or overtones 15 Figure 3. Complex soundwave 16 Figure 4. The Anatomy of the Ear 21 Figure 5. The Middle Ear 22 Figure 6. The Internal Ear 23 Figure 7. The Cochlea 24 Figure 8. Hearing mechanics 27 viii And thus by constantly hearing words, as they occurred in various sentences, I collected gradually for what they stood; and having broken in my mouth to these signs, I thereby gave utterance to my will. St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 1 1. Sound 2 Et ait ei: “Egredere et sta in monte coram Domino”. Et ecce Dominus transit, et ventus grandis et fortis subvertens montes et conterens petras ante Dominum; non in vento Dominus. Et post ventum, commotio; non in commotione Dominus. Et post commotionem, ignis; non in igne Dominus. Et post ignem, sibilus aurae tenuis. Quod cum audisset Elias, operuit vultum suum pallio et egressus stetit in ostio speluncae; et ecce vox ad eum dicens: “Quid agis hic, Elia?” Liber Primus Regum 19: 11-13 3 Participation is the engine of cultural production. Long before humans started writing, maybe even speaking, they started producing culture.1 From paintings in cave walls to rudimentary idiophones and aerophones, the archaeological record is full of traces of the human drive to produce culture and to pass it on to future generations.2 From the initial formation of early social units, people have strived to accompany the daily tasks aimed at their survival with other activities that helped them to make their life more bearable and even enjoyable. Ultimately this is what cultural production entails: a series of activities leading to the production of things that are not indispensable for survival. Music, poetry, dance, or decorative work on walls, like so many other cultural products, are not devices meant for nutrition, shelter, warmth, hydration, or any other basic necessity of human biological existence. And yet, humans from recorded history have used them to make their toil more bearable, to help time pass faster, to celebrate joyous events and commemorate painful ones, to communicate with forces unknown and, more importantly, to communicate with each other in order to maintain the cohesion of social units. Though cultural production might not have been important for individual survival, it was always essential for the preservation of social structures on which rests collective existence. This thesis argues that the reason cultural production is fundamental for coexistence is because it makes participation possible. Social units are built around participation; and participation, as stated at the beginning, is the engine of cultural production. Participation means more than just a series of 1 For an overview of recent research on this subject, focusing on the scientific evidence that supports the idea that humans started producing music, and probably dance, before developing language, see Mithen. 2 An aerophone is “any musical instrument in which the sound is produced by a vibrating column of air,” mainly what we know as wind instruments, and an idiophone is “a percussion instrument that consists simply of material such as metal or wood that is itself capable of producing sound, as opposed to a membranophone, in which stretched skin or similar is used as the agent of sound” (OED). For an archaeological perspective of acoustics and the study of sound see Scarre and Lawson. See also Mills. 4 actions undertaken as part of larger endeavors, or belonging to a determinate group, or taking part on a communal activity. Participation is before anything else a feeling: the feeling of belonging to something, of being part of something. Participation is what saves people from isolation and alienation, for it is alienation that leads human beings to literal and metaphorical death. Participation is what makes a teenager feel that he “fits in” a group at school, or what makes a scholar feel that he has earned his place among his peers. Participation is what compels people to extreme violence but also to incredible acts of self-sacrifice. Participation is what makes the public share in the exhilaration of a sports game, almost as if they were the ones scoring a goal or breaking a record. Participation is what makes it so hard to put down a good book when one is absorbed in the climax and gripped by the denouement of the action. It makes one’s heart rate increase, it accelerates one’s breathing, it gives one goosebumps, makes one sweat and shiver. All of these feelings are somatic manifestations of the way bodies and brains react to cultural products, because participation is the result of a sensory experience. Hence, the study of participation is, first and foremost, the study of an embodied aesthetic experience. 3 The body’s agents that make participation possible are the senses. It is through the aesthetic experience that people participate in the world around them and that they are able to recognize that others participate as well. The senses also provide the raw material for the making of cultural products, such as sounds, words, melodies, images, contrasts, textures, smells, tastes, just to name a few. And cultural products, in turn, evoke the richness of human aesthetic experiences, and allow them to be reframed, developed or replaced. Since the very inception of Philosophy, the senses have been made the object of study, both as bodily mechanisms and as 3 An aesthetic experience encompasses all interaction and engagement with art or nature, characterized by an ineffable aspect and high value when compared to other experiences of the surrounding environment (Tomlin 1). 5 abstract processes; just as old has been the debate to establish a hierarchical order among them. Throughout centuries of Western Philosophy, vision has been accorded a privileged rank.4 Even with the advent of the scientific era, vision has maintained precedence, while hearing has occupied the second place. The purpose of this thesis is to argue that this value judgment regarding the senses has been a major factor that has contributed to a historically limited understanding of how auditory perception works and to underestimating its many contributions to human experience.