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Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late Medieval Iberia by Henry Berlin (review)

2023; Washington University in St. Louis; Volume: 57; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/rvs.2023.a901504

2164-9308

Núria Silleras-Fernández,

Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

Reviewed by: Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late Medieval Iberia by Henry Berlin Nuria Silleras-Fernandez Berlin, Henry, Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late Medieval Iberia. U of Toronto P, 2021. 336 pp. Alone Together analyzes what Henry Berlin qualifies as an "explosion of literature" regarding sentiment, passions, and emotions in the Crowns of Aragon and Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal in the Late Middle Ages. According to Berlin this literature in prose (treatises and sentimental fiction) and verse (courtly poetry) was not just sentimental but was, more precisely, about sentiment. Berlin positions passions—a term that he favors over emotions, affects, or feelings because it is rooted in the thought of the period—as a primary field of intellectual debate in the fifteenth century. In this era, whereas the Portuguese preferred to produce ethical-political treatises and chronicles, those writing in Catalan and Castilian [End Page 107] generally focused on lyric poetry. Among this book's core achievements are its breadth of coverage and the meticulous and rigorous analysis of the texts examined. In addition, Berlin further builds a case for Iberian Studies in his conception of Iberia as an "inter-literary system," or a "relational system" (8). Thus, literature written in Castilian, Catalan, Portuguese, and some Latin didactic texts is carefully analyzed. Berlin finds that the connectivity among the various courts, writers, and courtiers was reinforced by carefully planned marital/political alliances that made borders porous and permitted the emergence of intellectual networks that crossed political borders and allowed the relationality of textual production. This dense study starts with a theoretical introduction and is then divided into two parts. The first part, "Friendship and Pleasure," is devoted to political and theological texts and explores the relationship between reason and passion, while the second part, "Compassion and Consolation," studies the passions as present in poetry and sentimental fiction. Chapter one investigates how fifteenth-century readers favored moral and didactic works as writers perceived their time as one marked by a political, social, and religious crisis that contributed to developing a vernacular thought in which reason and passions were portrayed in opposition. Specifically, this chapter investigates notions of friendship and community and the underlying ideal of managing one's emotions as seen in a few political treatises written in Castilian and Portuguese: Tratado de la comunidad, Diego de Valera's Doctrinal de príncipes and Exortación de la pas, Pedro of Portugal's Livro da vertuosa benfeytoria, and Rodrígo Sánchez de Arévalo's Suma de la política. The second chapter is dedicated to the works of the Bishop of Ávila, Alfonso de Madrigal, "el Tostado," whose texts on friendship and shared emotion also became an essential source of classical knowledge for later authors. Chapter three focuses not only on King Duarte I of Portugal's Leal conselheiro and his notions of virtue and reasoning as his experience with sadness, melancholy, and saudade, but also on love poetry and the lover's suffering as portrayed in compositions compiled in Juan Alfonso de Baena's Cancionero and in poems written by Pere Torroella. The second part of the book centers on more tortuous notions of love, as depicted in verse (mostly cancionero lyric) and sentimental fiction. Chapter four discusses passion and compassion in fifteenth-century Castilian and Catalan poetry that Berlin sees as following earlier models from Christianity and monasticism. Thus, through compassion and consolation Berlin studies Pedro López de Ayala's Libro rimado de palacio and the Marqués de Santillana's Gozos de Santa María that point toward a poetic vernacularization of forms of devotion and the use of the language of the passions. Chapter five examines "passionate quotation" by scrutinizing how the renowned Galician poet Macías, who tragically died of love, was remembered and quoted by fellow poets writing in Castilian and Catalan. The sixth chapter studies the conflict between compassion and discretion and between compassion and cruelty as presented in the works of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón's Siervo libre de amor, Pedro Constable of Portugal's Sátira de felice e infelice vida, and Tragédia de la insigne reina doña...