Peripheral Baroque negotiations of identity
Abstract
This dissertation explores the Baroque articulations of literary and national identity in two peripheries of the Spanish empire: the viceroyalties of Catalonia and New Spain (present day Mexico). I study several Catalan authors who wrote in Catalan, a romance language spoken in eastern Spain, in light of recent scholarship on authors of the Spanish American Baroque, which stresses the subversive ways in which colonized intellectuals appropriated hegemonic discourse. The authors I study elaborate a critique of Spanish colonial power relations in order to stimulate local identities: in the case of New Spain, this resulted in a Creole (the term mainly used for a European born in the Americas) identity that mimics yet simultaneously subverts hegemonic imperial discourse, while in the Catalan case, I explore a highly politicized literary production that would revitalize Catalan as a literary language equal to the language of empire, Spanish. These authors are studied in relation to their use of emblems, a genre common to the Renaissance and Baroque that combined word and image. My comparative analysis of these authors identifies important commonalities in these colonial intellectuals and their appropriation of the imperial, Baroque esthetic. ^
Subject Area
Literature, Romance
Recommended Citation
Aaron Ilika,
"Peripheral Baroque negotiations of identity"
(January 1, 2009).
Dissertations available from ProQuest.
Paper AAI3363370.
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3363370
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