Description

Visual language plays a key role in baroque Spanish literature. By examining the pictorial episodes in Spanish baroque novellas, Alicia R. Zuese elucidates how writers create pictorial texts and how audiences visualize their words. The writers examined include prominent representatives of Spanish prose--Cervantes, Lope de Vega, María de Zayas, and Luis Vélez de Guevara--as well as lesser-known authors including Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses, and an anonymous group in Córdoba. Applying methods from cognitive cultural studies, classical memory treatises, and techniques of spiritual visualization, Zuese breaks new ground by investigating how artistic genres and material culture help us grasp an audience's aural, material, visual, and textual literacies.