In an extensive analysis of early modern mythological literature, Sofie Kluge’s Diglossia theorizes the intersection of specific texts and the broad arc of early modern history through a mediating term, diglossia, that describes a double functionality for baroque interpretations of ancient myth: “Baroque mythological literature is a literature which oscillates between myth and allegory in its reimagining of the ancient mythical universe, ‘speaking in two tongues’” (5). The duality of baroque mythological literature subtends her close readings—in each case extensive, erudite, and deeply aware of the critical tradition—and motivates a broader historical argument that explains the emergence of this mythological literature. With examples drawn principally from the Spanish context, Kluge identifies baroque mythological allegory—and its ambiguous engagement with morality and aesthetics—as the preeminent mechanism for “venting a more equivocal, or at any rate a less dogmatic, view of contemporary reality and human life more broadly than the one officially...
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Book Review|
June 01 2017
Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse
Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse
. By Kluge, Sofie. Kassel
: Reichenberger
, 2016
. xii + 349 pp.
Donald Gilbert-Santamaría
Donald Gilbert-Santamaría
Donald Gilbert-Santamaría is associate professor of Spanish at the University of Washington. He recently completed a book manuscript tentatively titled The Poetics of Friendship in Early Modern Spain. His essay “Maravall’s Post-Hegelian Roots” appeared in the September 2009 issue of MLQ.
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Modern Language Quarterly (2017) 78 (2): 281–283.
Citation
Donald Gilbert-Santamaría; Diglossia: The Early Modern Reinvention of Mythological Discourse. Modern Language Quarterly 1 June 2017; 78 (2): 281–283. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-3812652
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