RESUMEN:
Este ensayo propone una lectura de La pícara Justina y sus paratextos, a partir de la relación de complementariedad entre el self-fashioning y las artes plásticas. Este análisis subraya el potencial de emblemas y jeroglíficos, escudos y empresas, de moldear la identidad individual y así contrarrestar la fijación del orden establecido con la genealogía, el abolengo, y la “limpieza de sangre”. El caso de Rodrigo Calderón, poderoso ministro de Felipe III, cuyo escudo de armas figura en la portada de la editio princeps, sirve como ejemplo para investigar la conexión entre la heráldica y el fenómeno del self-fashioning, en la España de la temprana modernidad. Por una parte, la manipulación de la identidad a partir de formas simbólicas representa un desafío al sistema; por otra, la adopción de sus paradigmas perpetúa y sustenta los idearios culturales sobre los que está construido.
ABSTRACT:
This essay proposes a reading of La pícara Justina and its paratexts based on the complementary relationship between self-fashioning and artistic modes of expression. This analysis emphasizes the potential of emblems and hieroglyphics, imprese and coats of arms, to shape individual identity in order to counteract the establishment’s fixation with genealogy, ancestry, and the so-called “purity of blood”. The case of Rodrigo Calderón, a powerful political figure at the court of Philip III whose coat of arms is featured on the title page of the first edition, offers an example to investigate the connection between heraldry and the process of self-fashioning in early modern Spain. On the one hand, the exercise of shaping one’s public persona through symbolic forms of representation constitutes a challenge to the social order; on the other hand, the adoption of its own paradigms, contributes to perpetuate discriminatory cultural practices and prevailing ideologies.
This essay examines an aspect of Lope de Vega's iconographic program in El peregrino en su patria by focusing on the interpolated tale of Everardo, a Christian knight who has been confined to a prison cell that is painted with «hieroglyphs and verses». The episode combines rhetorical and dialectical aspects of memory and establishes a connection between artificial memory systems, emblems, secular meditational practices, and storytelling. Everardo's tale displays a mnemonic intentionality that connects it with the artificial systems of memory that were developed in classical antiquity and were later used as prototypes during the early modern period. The episode not only emphasizes the importance of emblems as stimuli to assist memory but also stresses the narrative potential of the emblem and its capacity to produce a sequential dual narrative. This dual narrative consists of the ekphrastic description of the emblems by the narrator and the understanding of Everardo's own past through his interpretation of the emblematic images.
This multidisciplinary pedagogy offers eight allegorical images in support of a visually contextual reading of The Prince. Responding to the pedagogical problem of students treating the text as an ahistorical manual for action addressed to them, our approach resituates The Prince in its visual cultural context. This allows us to specify Machiavelli’s innovations as a theorist in terms of the importance of plurality and particularity in regard to political action. An online supplemental appendix provides access to databases and additional resources. Exploring Machiavelli’s politicized moral concepts of prudence, parsimony, liberality, fortune, and impetuosity using these images, we show his masterful invocation and redeployment of the cultural codes of his time. In presenting a visual history of concepts, we hope to move students beyond common contemporary ideological biases and literal readings and to alert them to the complex stories and relationships evident in the visual history of civic humanism.
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