UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Pre-Modern Iberian Fragments in the Present: Studies in Philology, Time, Representation, and Value Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92t2m6f3 Author Bamford, Heather Marie Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Pre-Modern Iberian Fragments in the Present: Studies in Philology, Time, Representation and Value By Heather Marie Bamford A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, Co-Chair Professor José Rabasa, Co-Chair Professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Professor Ignacio Navarrete Professor David Hult Fall 2010 1 Abstract Pre-Modern Iberian Fragments in the Present: Studies in Philology, Time, Representation, and Value by Heather Marie Bamford Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Literatures and Languages University of California, Berkeley Professors Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco and José Rabasa, Co-Chairs This dissertation examines the uses of medieval and early-modern Iberian cultural objects in the present. It draws on the notion of fragment and actual fragmentary testimonies to study how pre- modern Iberian things and texts are reconstituted and used for various projects of personal, institutional, national and transnational reconstitution in the present. The corpus objects are necessarily diverse in chronological scope, with examples from the medieval, early-modern and modern periods, and touch upon works of many genres: chivalric romance, royal and personal correspondence, early-modern and modern historiography, Hispano-Arabic and Hispano-Hebrew lyric, inscriptions, pre-modern and modern biographies and 21st century book exhibitions. The dissertation proposes that Iberian fragments are engaged in various forms of reconstitution or production in the present and, at the same time, are held as timeless, unchanging entities that have the capability to allow users to connect with something genuinely old, truly Spanish and, indeed, eternal. These methods of reconstitution include philology; the writing of history and attempts to understand the meaning of past time; the employment of fragments in debates about the origins of literature in Spain or, alternatively, pluralism and cultural sensitivity; and the collection of old books and the rare book market. To investigate the thesis regarding the existence of fragments between production and belief, I build on work on “presence” by Jean Luc Nancy, H. U. Gumbrecht, Eelco Runia, F. R. Ankersmit and others. Presence refers to the way in which the past is recalled or imagined in the present, or to the effects of present objects on observers and users. I compare the situation of the fragment with the status of the concept of presence. Specifically, the dissertation advances that the notions of presence as developed by the above authors reside between the pulls of production and metaphysics, as do fragments. The project presents four case studies, each studying one of the modes of reconstitution outlined above, a different motif of fragmentation and an element of the above tension in presence, which I call the “presence dialectic.” The first chapter posits philology as a means of reconstitution in working with highly fragmentary chivalric manuscripts to examine the impact of the fragments’ physical presence on philological practice. The second chapter moves to two 16th and 17th 2 century codices comprised of different “fragments” compiled by well-known bibliographers. It analyzes how early-modern scholars conceived of and brought together past times through the collection of documents, building a framework for characterizing the time of an old, physically present book. Chapters three and four shift away from fragmentary manuscripts or codices comprised of “fragments” to two very different forms of completion. The third chapter studies the “romance kharjas”, two complete muwaššaḥāt and concepts of representation to examine the fragmentation of poetry by critics as a form of filling in the gaps of Iberian literary history. In analyzing the muwaššaḥāt as literature, the chapter investigates the opposition of representation to a less-situational, freer presence. The fourth chapter evinces the thesis of the presence dialectic by querying the meaning of the word “value” in the collection and sale of pre-modern Iberian material in the modern age. It draws on the rise of Hispanism in the United States through an analysis of the formation of the Boston Public Library and The Hispanic Society of America. The project works across medieval and early modern studies, philosophy of history and cultural studies to assess the reconstitution of pre-modern Iberian cultural objects in the present and their use for present-day projects of reconstitution. The dissertation looks both forwards and backwards, locating the activity of the modern medievalist as one that both historicizes and negotiates a use of the old material in the present. In doing so, the project intends to contribute usable philological studies on specific manuscripts, to further work on presence and to explore critically the meaning of the term “material culture.” i For my parents, Beck, and Sam, for 30 years back, and hopefully two thirties forward ii Contents Acknowledgements iii Introduction iv 1 Fragment as Phenomenon and Philological Subject: Two Cases of Chivalric Binding Fragments 1 2 The Time of Three Early Modern Codices in the Present 28 3 Locating the Romance Kharjas in Representation and Presence 50 4 The Fragment Market: The Value of Pre-Modern Iberian Things In The Modern Age 75 Conclusion 99 Works Cited 104 iii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the result of classes and conversations with generous teachers and friends. I thank Ignacio Navarrete and David Hult for their patient guidance on this project and for their graduate seminars, each of which served as inspiration and hope for dissertation writing. Spirited conversations with Sepp Gumbrecht, all of which I hold very close, created large parts of this dissertation. I thank my directors Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco and José Rabasa for their graduate seminars, each of which taught me to read and think in ways I never thought I’d be able. Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco brought to my attention a middle ages and modes of thought that will always be new and very dear to me. Alberto Montaner’s erudition and constant electronic presence aided me in this project from start to finish. Vincent Barletta’s advice on the dissertation was pivotal in giving the dissertation a sense of coherence. The friendship, intellectual engagement, and occasional rowdiness of Tara Daly, Seth Kimmel, and Israel Sanz saw me through many rough spots in the process. I benefitted greatly from the assistance and encouragement of the following teachers and friends: Chelsie Anttila, Emilie Bergmann, Jerry R. Craddock, Emily Francomano, Michael Iarocci, David Kessler, Heather McMichael, Dan Nemser, Kristin Olson, Jochelle Pereña, Nasser Riyadh, Maher Sabry, and Christine Quinan. I am sincerely grateful to all of you. The dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Sam, and Rebecca Kirkpatrick. iv Introduction One of the most provocative reasons I have heard for why one should pursue medieval studies as opposed to a modern national literature is that “nobody is medieval.” The logic behind this statement is that American students in Hispanic or other national literature departments are less likely to feel as though they are treading on another nation’s territory if they study its old literature. Such a recommendation to study the literature and things from a period with no survivors recalls all of the pre-modern things and ideas no longer present that the medievalist must ignore or attempt to supply. The Ibero-medievalist thus requires a protean creativity, the ability to work across some five centuries and perhaps that many languages, a facility with both handwritten and early printed books, and the capability to historicize medieval cultural objects while also locating their relevance in the present. At times, medieval studies calls for an indulgence in the thoroughly misguided belief in the possibility of knowing what it was “really like” to have lived back then, or to feel at least moderately comfortable with systems of law, religion, and leisure that no one alive has ever experienced firsthand. About two years ago, I became interested in fragmentary pre-modern manuscripts of the most damaged sort. Scarcely able to read them, and judging by their tattered appearance, I considered the pieces a physical manifestation of the above notion that “nobody” has a full claim on Iberia’s middle ages. I began by examining the sole extant manuscript of the Amadís de Gaula, consisting of four small pieces (ca. 1425) held at the University of California, Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. I especially wondered how pieces so highly prized and economically valuable, but not able to contribute significantly to the establishment of a more primitive version of the Amadís than Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s, had appeared in so few philological studies. My interest in the fragments was not driven by a wish to recapture lost content or a more amorphous missing past. Rather, my aim was to examine the functions the pieces were enlisted to perform in the present and what they “were” to present users. In this vein, I not only sought to investigate the fragments’ historical context or to situate them within the tradition of the Amadís de Gaula, but also to identify the means by which modern-day academic and general public users of various stripes fill in the fragments’ gaps. Likewise, I queried the personal, institutional, and national present-day “gaps” that the fragments fill. These latter gaps include the obligation of a nation to establish a sense of knowing its roots and to create a continuous record from a point of origin to the present. They also consist of the compulsions of an individual to want to complete his or her personal projects of reconstitution.