This course examines the New World Baroque across literature, art, film and theory from the 17th century to today. It will consider how the Baroque aesthetic was revived in the 20th century as both a way to understand Latin American cultural foundations and as part of neo-Baroque avant-garde movements. Readings will explore debates around defining the Baroque, examine both colonial-era and contemporary works, and discuss how neo-Baroque expressions relate to questions of colonialism, modernity, and identity in the Global South. The course aims to trace transatlantic genealogies of the Baroque concept and understand its associations with Caribbean and Latin American culture, past and present.
Original Description:
One trend in Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture has been the revival of baroque aesthetics. " In this course we will consider some of the principal colonial and contemporary works of art and literature studied under these terms, and the theoretical and critical works that study or promote this revival.
Original Title
Syllabus for New World Baroque Genealogies Graduate Seminar in Comparative Literature Fall 2019
This course examines the New World Baroque across literature, art, film and theory from the 17th century to today. It will consider how the Baroque aesthetic was revived in the 20th century as both a way to understand Latin American cultural foundations and as part of neo-Baroque avant-garde movements. Readings will explore debates around defining the Baroque, examine both colonial-era and contemporary works, and discuss how neo-Baroque expressions relate to questions of colonialism, modernity, and identity in the Global South. The course aims to trace transatlantic genealogies of the Baroque concept and understand its associations with Caribbean and Latin American culture, past and present.
This course examines the New World Baroque across literature, art, film and theory from the 17th century to today. It will consider how the Baroque aesthetic was revived in the 20th century as both a way to understand Latin American cultural foundations and as part of neo-Baroque avant-garde movements. Readings will explore debates around defining the Baroque, examine both colonial-era and contemporary works, and discuss how neo-Baroque expressions relate to questions of colonialism, modernity, and identity in the Global South. The course aims to trace transatlantic genealogies of the Baroque concept and understand its associations with Caribbean and Latin American culture, past and present.
Department of Spanish and Portuguese/Program in Comparative Literature
The University of Texas at Austin
ILA 387/CL 381/LAS 381 New World Baroque Genealogies: Theory, Text, Art, Film
Unique Numbers: 43850/38950/33479 Professor César A. Salgado W 9-‐12 BEN 1.118 Hours: TTH 12:30-‐2 BEN 3.140
Description: One trend in twentieth century Caribbean and Latin American literature and culture was the revival of baroque aesthetics. "Lo barroco" resurfaced both as a period concept to trace the "foundations" of Latin American expression in colonial times and as the poetics of a "neobarroco" avant-‐garde artistic and intellectual movement. In this course we will consider some of the principal colonial and contemporary works of art and literature studied under these terms, and the theoretical and critical works that study its origins or promote its revival. We will be concerned with tracing a transatlantic/subaltern genealogy of the concept, studying how the Baroque came to be associated with aspects of past and present day Caribbean and Latin(x) American culture and expression. Issues of hybridity, ethnicity, aesthetics, colonialism, indigeneity, religious orthodoxy, sexuality, gender, race and power will be reviewed in this genealogical approach We will focus on how relevant this trend and the debates it has inspired remain today by looking at how the persistence of the baroque in Latin(x) America is connected to questions of colonialism and coloniality in the Global South. We will consider how neobaroque movements spring out of a debate regarding the problematic cultural and political legacies of colonial dominance in the region's attempts at modernity, and why the concept-‐-‐normally thought as referring to a seventeenth century European artistic period following the Renaissance-‐-‐comes to describe decolonial and queer tendencies in the postmodern art and writing of a non-‐European region in the twentieth and twenty-‐ first centuries. To achieve these goals, readings for the course will be divided into three sets. The first consists of essays and critical articles that debate the definition and the appearance of baroque art during both the seventeenth century and the modern and postmodern periods. Texts by Wellek, Wolfllin, Weisbach, d’Ors, Maravall, Genette, Sarduy, Lacan, Calabrese, Deleuze, Glissant, Salgado, Parkinson Zamora and Kaup, among others, will be discussed as required reading or in special presentations. To understand the arguments regarding the dynamic continuity or the ruptures and differences between the baroque art of the past and the neobaroque expressions of the present, for the second set we'll cover a selection of European and New World writings of the Golden Age/colonial period by Bernardo de Balbuena, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. We'll read these in relation to what neobaroque authors and critics say about them. The third set of readings consists of contemporary neobaroque prose and poetry by Caribbean, Mexican, and South Cone writers and Latinx experimental writing in Spanglish to be discussed in the light of the theories presented in the essays of the first set. We will also consider how recent Caribbean, Latinx, Latin-‐ and Afro-‐American films, art, and performance labeled as ultra-‐baroque, brut-‐baroque, or hip hop baroque (Luis Gispert, Kehinde Wiley, Pepón Osorio) reflect these concerns. The neobaroque aesthetic is usually associated with the work of Cuban writers José Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier, and Severo Sarduy (Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Senel Paz, Zoe Valdés are also studied under the rubric). In their fiction and their critical essays, these writers have revived and revised the European notion of the Baroque as a tool to analyze Cuban and Caribbean cultural history. The neobaroque, however, is far from being a Cuban monopoly. An analogous revival of the concept can be seen in the literary and critical works of Mexican writers Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando del Paso, Salvador Elizondo, and Daniel Sada. Mario Monteforte Toledo has argued about a regional Guatemala neobaroque esthetic in relation to the work of Miguel Angel Asturias and his successors. A neobaroque performative virtuosity is one of the most distinct characteristics of the last wave of Puerto Rican fiction initiated by Luis Rafael Sánchez' and continued in the works of Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá. Ana Lydia Vega, and Mayra Santos. The Argentine Abel Posse writes in the spirit of Carpentier and Sarduy and a neobarroso poetic queer movement has emerged in Argentina through Nestor Perlongher and in Chile through Pedro Lemebel. This course will consider the neobaroque as a pan-‐ American phenomenon, even though its main focus will be on its Caribbean manifestations. In this process, I hope to explore why an esthetic first associated with the great continental centers of the colonial period (the barroco americano of Mexico City and Lima) comes to be connected with the cultures of the Caribbean archipelago (neobarroco caribeño). Instructor’s 2019 statement: New World Baroque has been a running concern in my work since graduate school. It has allowed me to interrogate the politics of periodization in Western epistemics; principles and polemics in art, intellectual, and religious history; long-‐term transatlantic political and cultural dynamics; and transnational, across-‐the-‐arts esthetic movements. I approach the field as one about colonialism and decoloniality, culture and counterculture, in processes of European expansion and anti-‐European emancipation across the globe. This year I expect to dwell more on the centrality of sexuality and queerness in neobaroque polemics (Sarduy’s neobarroco and Perlongher’s neobarroso); questions regarding artifice, nature, ecology and matter (Deleuze, ); Marxist and decolonial interpretations of baroque poetics and politics in the New World (Rama, Echevarría, Quijano); and Afro-‐ Caribbean cartographies in New World baroque cultural theory (Glissant, Lezama Lima, Angel Escobar, Soleida Ríos). I also will want us to review recent studies on New Spain baroque culture and neobaroque expression across the Americas by contemporary scholars such as Stephanie Merrim, Anna More and Monika Kaup.
Primary literary texts: Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza mexicana Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, selection of prose and poetry, Neptuno alegórico Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Teatro de virtudes políticas Alejo Carpentier, El acoso, Concierto barroco
Severo Sarduy, De donde son los cantantes, Big Bang/Mood Indigo José Lezama Lima, chapter selection from Paradiso and Oppiano Licario Reinaldo Arenas, selections from El color del verano Echevarren/Kozer/Sefamí, ed. selection of poems from Medusario Nestor Perlongher, Parque Lezama Angel Escobar, Abuso de confianza. La sombra del decir Soleida Ríos, El texto sucio, Elegía a Angel Escobar Giannina Braschi, United States of Banana Urayoán Noel, Hi-‐density Politics/Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico
Essays and studies (selections in readings packet): Antonio Maravall, La cultura del barroco Mariano Picón Salas, De la conquista a la independencia Irving Leonard, Baroque Times in Old Mexico José Lezama Lima, La expresión americana Severo Sarduy, Barroco Octavio Paz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe Angel Rama, La ciudad letrada Édouard Glissant, Poetique de la relation Bolívar Echevarría, La modernidad de lo barroco Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque Néstor Perlongher, Un barroco de trinchera Omar Calabrese, Neo-‐Baroque: A Sign of the Times
Films Barroco by Paul Leduc Yo, la peor de todas by Maria Luisa Bemberg El viajero inmóvil by Thomas Piard Prospero’s Books by Peter Greenaway La vida es sueño by Raúl Ruiz
Criticism and scholarship John Lyons, ed. Oxford Handbook of the Baroque (online) Lois Zamora and Monika Kaup, eds. Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest
Choices for book report/reviews: Lois Parkinson Zamora, The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction Greg Lambert, The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture Carlos Rincón, Mapas y pliegues: Ensayos de cartografía cultural y de lectura del Neobarroco Angela Ndalianis, Neo-‐Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment Christopher Johnson, Hyberboles. The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought Elizabeth Armstrong & Victor Zamudio-‐Taylor, Ultra-‐Baroque. Aspects of Post Latin American Art Stephanie Merrim, The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture Anna More, Baroque Sovereignty: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and the Creole Archive Monika Kaup, Neobaroque in the Americas: Alternative Modernties in Literature, Visual Art, and Film Jaime Rodríguez Matos, Writing of the Formless: Jose Lezama Lima and the End of Time Marcos Wasem, Barroco y sublime: poética para Perlongher Peter Krieger, Visual Epidemics: Las Vegas Neo-‐Baroque in Mexico City/Epidemias visuales. El neobarroco de Las Vegas en la Ciudad de México Alejandro de la Fuente, ed. Queloides: Raza y racismo en el arte cubano contemporáneo Urayoán Noel, In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (CANVAS)
Required texts: Readings packet with theoretical texts and historiography at Jenn’s Copies Lois Zamora and Monika Kaup, eds. Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest José Lezama Lima, La expresión americana, ed. Irlemar Chiampi Severo Sarduy, De donde son los cantantes, ed. Roberto González Echevarría
Recommended: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras completas, ed. Alfonso Méndez Plancarte Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Obras selectas, ed. Irving Leonard José Lezama Lima, Paradiso, ed. Cintio Vitier, Oppiano Licario, ed. César López Reinaldo Arenas, El color del verano
Requirements and Grading:
One 15-‐20 page final term paper (60%). Class participation, including regular oral presentation (20%). Two book reports/reviews (20%).
Aug 28: Introduction and organizational meeting
Sept 4: La querella del barroco: archetype, style, or historical period?
Readings: John Lyons, “The Crisis of the Baroque” (online) Katherine Ibbett and Anna More, “The Baroque as a Literary Concept” (online) René Wellek, "The Concept of the Baroque" (P1) Heinrich Wolfflin, selections from Principles of Art History (P1) Werner Weisbach, El barroco: arte de la contrarreforma, chapter 1 (P1) Eugenio d'Ors, Selections in translation from Lo barroco (P1) José Antonio Maravall, chapters from La cultura del barroco (P1)
Sept 11: Barroco de Indias: New World Baroque Theory and Theorists
Readings: Mariano Picón Salas, chapters from De la conquista a la independencia (P1) Irving Leonard, chapters from Baroque Times in Old Mexico (P1) Alejo Carpentier, "Lo barroco y lo real maravilloso" (P1) José Lezama Lima, "La curiosidad barroca" in La expresión americana (Co-‐0p) Severo Sarduy, “Barroco y neobarroco”; “La cosmología barroca: Kepler” (P1)
Sept 18: Early Baroque Colonial Poetry: New World "Counter-‐Epic"
Readings: Bernardo de Balbuena, La grandeza mexicana (P-‐2) Silvestre de Balboa y Troya de Quesada, Espejo de paciencia (P-‐2) Angel Rama, chapters 1-‐3 from La ciudad letrada (P-‐1) Roberto González Echevarría, article on Espejo de paciencia (P-‐1) Stephanie Merrim, Balbuena chapters from The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literature (2010)
Sept 25: Sor Juana and Baroque Society in Colonial Mexico
Readings: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, selections of poems, Primero sueño, El Divino Narciso, Carta Atenagórica, Respuesta a Sor Filotea (P-‐2) Octavio Paz, chapters from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (P-‐1) Stephanie Merrim, Sor Juana chapters from The Spectacular City
Book report #1: Stephanie Merrim, The Spectacular City
Oct 2: Baroque Spectacle in Colonial Mexico: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. Colonial Politics and Synchretic Iconography in Triumphal Arches
Readings: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, Theatro de virtudes políticas (P2) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Neptuno alegórico (P2) Kathleen Ross, chapter from The Baroque Narrative of Sigüenza y Góngora (CANVAS) Serge Gruzinski, selection from The Mestizo Mind. The Intellectual Dynamics of Colonization and Globalization (CANVAS) Anna More, chapter from Baroque Sovereignty: C. de Sigüenza and the Creole Archive (CANVAS)
Book Report #2 on Anna More, Baroque Sovereignty: C. de Sigüenza and the Creole Archive
Oct 9: Alejo Carpentier: Neobaroque Narrative as Architecture and Performance
Readings: Alejo Carpentier, "La ciudad de las columnas" (P1); El acoso, Concierto barroco (P2) George B. Handley, “The Postcolonial Ecology of the New World Baroque” (CANVAS) Lois Parkinson Zamora, selection from The Inordinate Eye (CANVAS) William Egginton, selection from The Theater of Truth: The Ideology of (Neo)Baroque Aesthetics (CANVAS)
Book report #3: Lois Parkinson Zamora, The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction
Oct 16: The Neo-‐Baroque as Caribbean Relationality: Lezama vs. Glissant
José Lezama Lima, La expresión americana (finish); Paradiso, chapters 7 & 8; Oppiano Licario, chapter 5 Édouard Glissant, selections from Poetics of relation & Caribbean Discourse (CANVAS) César A. Salgado, “Hybridity in New World Baroque Theory” (online) Juan Pablo Lupi, from Reading Anew: José Lezama Lima’s Rhetorical Investigations (CANVAS) Jaime Rodríguez Matos, chapter from Writing of the Formless: Jose Lezama Lima and the End of Time (CANVAS)
Book report #4: Jaime Rodríguez Matos, Writing of the Formless: Jose Lezama Lima and the End of Time
Oct 23: Neo-‐Baroque Artificiality, Simulacra, Anamorphosis and Folds in Severo Sarduy
Severo Sarduy, De donde son los cantantes; selections from Big Bang and other works (CANVAS) _____________, “Barroco furioso,” essays from La simulación (P1) Jacques Lacan, "Du baroque" (CANVAS) Gerard Gennette, "L'Or tombe sur le fer," "D'un récit baroque" (CANVAS) Gilles Deleuze, selections from Le plis/The Fold (CANVAS)
Book report #5: Gilles Deleuze, The Fold
Oct. 30: Baroque Decolonialities in Colonial and Contemporary Mexico: Echevarría vs. Quijano, Monsivás vs. Sada
Readings: Bolívar Echevarría, "El ethos barroco" and other chapters from La modernidad del barroco (P3) Aníbal Quijano, chapters from Colonialidad, Poder, Cultura y Conocimiento en América Latina (CANVAS) Carlos Monsiváis, "Neobarroco y cultura popular" (P3) Gonzalo Celorio, "Del barroco al neobarroco" (P3) Salvador Oropesa, "Obscuritas and the Closet: Queer Neobaroque in Mexico"(P3) Daniel Sada, Casi nunca o El lenguaje del juego (CANVAS)
Book report #6: Bolívar Echevarría, La modernidad de lo barroco ( or Peter Krieger, Visual Epidemics: Las Vegas Neo-‐Baroque in Mexico City
Nov 6: Queer Neobarroso in the South Cone and the Influence of Reinaldo Arenas
Néstor Perlongher, "Caribe transplatino," "La barroquización," "Cuba, el sexo y el puente de plata"; selections from Un barroco de trinchera (P3) Pedro Lemebel, selections from Tengo miedo torero (CANVAS) Reinaldo Arenas, selections from El color del Verano (CANVAS) Selections of poems by Perlongher, Oswaldo Lamborghini, and others from Medusario, Parque Lezama and other collections (CANVAS)
Report #7: Marcos Wasem, Barroco y sublime: poética para Perlongher
Nov 13: Alamar Neobaroque: Confronting Lezama Lima in Afro-‐Cuban Poetry and Visual Arts
Angel Escobar, poems from Abuso de confianza, La sombra del decir (CANVAS) Soleida Ríos, poems from A Wa Nilé, El texto sucio (CANVAS) Georgina Herrera, selections from Always Rebellious/Siempre rebelde (CANVAS) Nancy Morejón, selection of essays and poems (CANVAS) Essays by Odette Casamayor and Alejandro de la Fuente in Queloides (CANVAS)
Report #8: Alejandro de la Fuente, ed. Queloides: Raza y racismo en el arte cubano contemporáneo
Nov. 20: Barroco Pobre in the Urban Americas: Luis Gispert, Kehinde Wiley, Pepón Osorio, Adal Maldonado
Roberto J. Tejeda, Luis Gispert/Loud Image (CANVAS) Pepón Osorio, De Puerta en Puerta/Door to Door (CANVAS) Jennifer González, selections from Pepón Osorio (CANVAS) Patricia Yaeger, “’Black Men Dressed in Gold: Eduora Welty, Empty Objects, and the Neobaroque” (CANVAS) Adal Maldonado, Blueprints for a Nation/Out of Focus Puerto Ricans (CANVAS) Monika Kaup, chapters from Neobaroque in the Americas
Reports #9: Monika Kaup, Neobaroque in the Americas: Alternative Modernties in Literature, Visual Art, and Film
Dec 4: Neobaroque and NeobaRícans: Spanglish as Decolonial Poeisis
Readings: Giannina Braschi, selections from United States of Banana (CANVAS) Urayoán Noel, Hi-‐density Politics/Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico (CANVAS) Ed Torres, selections of poetry (CANVAS) Tato Laviera, selections from Bendición: The Complete Poems (CANVAS) Victor Hernández Cruz, selections from Maraca: New and Selected Poems (CANVAS) César A. Salgado, “El neobarroco y lo neoba-‐rícan: El espánglish como poeisis o signo eficaz”
Report #10 Urayoán Noel, In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (CANVAS)
(Post-Contemporary Interventions and Latin America in Translation) Julio Ramos, Translated by John D. Blanco, Foreword by José David Saldívar - Divergent Modernities_ Culture and Politics in Nineteent