Providence and acceleration : prophetic modalities in early modern Iberian literature
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Rather than foretelling the future in any strict sense, prophecy in early modern Iberian literature works to read a telos—what I call "destiny"—out of the historical or legendary past. An act of postdiction, this teleological mode of reading also has an important pragmatic and interpellative element; it calls for and even demands present action in light of a preordained future. Prophecy, in this sense, works to transcend time in order to act both within and upon it. Particularly in early modern Catholic Europe, prophecies shaped perceptions of and controlled destiny through two modalities that, drawing on Reinhardt Koselleck's "Futures Past" (1985), I call "providentialism" and "accelerationism"—that is, the practice of slowing time down to defend the status quo with triumphalist postdictions or quickening its pace to rush to meet a future perceived to be redemptive. Although providentialist and accelerationist prophecies crop up frequently across literary genres in early modern Iberia, given the simultaneously evangelical and acquisitive motives that underlay the development and expansion of Portugal and Spain's respective empires, they are most prevalent in texts sitting at the crossroads of the sacred and the political. Such texts include, but are not limited to, epic poems, autos sacramentales, sermons, and political treatises that appropriate, develop, and use prophecy in their interrogations of empire. More specifically, I focus on epics such as Alonso Ercilla y Zúñiga's "La Araucana" (1569, 1578, 1589) and Luís de Camões's "Os Lusíadas" (1572), Pedro Calderón de la Barca's autos sacramentales, as well as António Vieira's prophetic treatises and a selection of his sermons.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Kark, Christopher Kenneth |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Primary advisor | Barletta, Vincent |
| Thesis advisor | Barletta, Vincent |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Rocha, Marília Librandi |
| Advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Advisor | Rocha, Marília Librandi |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Christopher Kenneth Kark. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Christopher Kenneth Kark
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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