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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