barthes gongora and non sense

8/3/2019 Barthes Gongora and Non Sense

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Barthes, Gngora, and Non-SenseAuthor(s): Paul Julian SmithSource: PMLA, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 82-94Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/462537

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PAUL JULIAN SMITH

Barthes,Gongora,and Non-SenseR OLANDBARTHES nd Luisde G6ngora:at first the conjunction seems perverse,evenpreposterous.After all, Barthes himself ex-presses little interest in European literaturesandlanguagesother than the French,still less in Span-ish poetry of the Golden Age. Yet on closer exami-nation the conjunction seems more plausible.Commonplaces about both writers tend to coin-cide: thus Barthesis a professedhedonist, the the-orist of "pleasure" in its various forms, andG6ngora is the poet of the senses, the eulogist ofpagan luxury and bodily delight. Yetboth couchpleasure in the language of difficulty, and bothare attackedby their contemporariesfor their useof "jargon." G6ngora'sextremelinguistic disrup-tion, his separation,say, of noun and adjective,ofarticle and noun, is as radicalas the disintegrativepoetics championed by Barthes in the experimen-tal works of a Robbe-Grillet or of a Sollers. Inparticular the formal characteristicsof Barthes'sand G6ngora's jargons have much in common: alove of neologism and Latinism, a relianceon thefigures of contrast and disruption: antithesis,asyndeton, anacoluthon. Like the modern textpraised in Le plaisir du texte, G6ngora's formaldifficulty exacts a reading that is leisured, or, inBarthes'sword, "aristocratic."And like the mod-ern text again, G6ngora's later works are"writerly," requiring the active participation ofthe reader in the reproduction of syntax, view-point, and (eventuallyand provisionally)meaning.The perspective they offer the reader is multipleand discontinuous, an aspect enhanced by thelearnedness of Gongora's verse, by its saturationin erudite reference and allusion. The space ofthese poems is (in Barthes'simage again) the echochamber,of a generalizedand constantlydeployed"citation without speechmarks," that remainsboth anonymous and highly tangible. If all writ-ing may be seen as the intersection of a multipli-city of discourses, then few poets haveforegrounded this intertextualityas emphaticallyand knowingly as G6ngora.1Barthes, like G6ngora, raids the texts of thepast in the production of his works, which typi-

cally take the form of a collection (or "circle")offragments. The poems I treat by Gongora mightbe seen as equally fragmentaryand discontinuous.The Soledades, or Solitudes (written around1612-13),perhapsG6ngora's greatestachievement,are unfinished and (arguably) ill-defined works.They consist of two poems (of what may havebeen a projected four) of about one thousandlines each, framed in a loose and flexible meter,the silva.2 The narrative is elliptical: in the firstpoem the (nameless) hero is shipwreckedon anunnamed island and is welcomed by the local rus-tics, one of whom delivers a lengthy oration onthe perils of navigation. He witnesses a marriageand the games by which it is celebrated. In thesecond, he is entertainedby a fishermanwho tellsof his daughter'sexploits in the catching of ma-rine monsters; there follows a song sung alter-nately by two amorous sailors,and the work ends,abruptly,with the descriptionof a hawkingparty.Pleasure, difficulty, intertextuality,discontinu-ity-these are general areas that Barthes andG6ngora seem to have in common. There is onepoint, however,at which Barthes refersexplicitlyto G6ngora in his own writing. It is a fragmentinRoland Barthespar Roland Barthes entitled "Ac-tif/passif":Viril/non viril:ce couplecelebre,qui regnesurtoutela Doxa,resume ous lesjeuxd'alternance:ejeu para-digmatiquedu sens et le jeu sexuel de la parade toutsensbienforme est uneparade:accouplementt misea mort).Virile/nonvirile:hisfamouscouple,whichreignsoverall the Doxa,comprehendsll kinds of the playof al-ternation: he paradigmatic lay of meaningand thesexualplayof the parade all well-formedmeaning sa parade:coupling ogetherandputtingto death).

(136)3The transgression of the deadly coupling of op-posites is fraught with danger: thus in "Arabcountries" (unnamed) the practice of homosexu-ality, potentially transgressive and libertarian,

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Paul Julian Smithmerely reinscribes the subject in the tyrannicalparadigm of performance and acceptance: ac-tive/passive. There remains, nevertheless,the pos-sibility of escape, both sexual and textual:Cependant,des lors que l'alternative st refus6e deslorsquele paradigmestbrouille), 'utopiecommence:le sens et le sexedeviennent'objetd'unjeu libre,auseinduquel es formes(polys6miques)t les pratiques(sensuelles),ib&erese la prisonbinaire,vont se met-tre enetatd'expansionnfinie.Ainsipeuventnaitreuntextegongorienet une sexualit6heureuse.However, nce the alternatives refused oncethepar-adigmis scrambled), topia begins:meaningand sexbecomethe objectof freeplay, n the midstof which(polysemic) orms and (sensual)practices, reedfromthe binaryprison,will reacha stateof infiniteexpan-sion. In this waythere can be borna Gongorine extand a happysexuality. (137)The transgression hat will transcendtransgressionitself and free the subject from the binary prisonis thus given a name: happiness, or G6ngora.Barthes'suse of the name hereis no doubt (to usehis term) "reactive." t serves a rhetoricalfunctionin his argument, by denoting the exclusion of theterm he rejects.The "Gongorine"text is implicitlyopposed to the supposed characteristicsof Frenchclassical writing attacked in Le degre zero del'ecriture(32-40) and in the essays on La Bruy&re(Essais critiques 221-37) and La Rochefoucauld(Nouveaux essais critiques 69-88): continuity,metonymic progression,closure. French"clarity,"ridiculed by Barthes in Critique et verite, is su-perseded by Spanish "baroque" convolution,whose obscurities are supposedly more open tothe free play of sense, or meaning.Barthes is not alone in equating G6ngora andnon-sense. In Lacan'sEcrits, when the "Freudianobject" speaks, it claims to be present in thosethings that Doxa, or common opinion, woulddeny the name of truth:Jevagabonde ansce quevous tenezpouretre emoinsvraiparessence:dans le rave,dansle defi au sens dela pointela plusgongorique t le nonsensedu calem-bour le plus grotesque,dans e hasard, t nonpasdansla loi, mais danssa contingence ....I roamaroundnthethings hatyoutake o be theleasttruthfulbytheirverynature: n dream,n thechallengeto meaningposed bythe most Gongorine onceit and

the nonsenseof the most outrageouspun, in chance,and not in the law,but in its contingency... (209)

As we shall see, it is precisely a lack of meaningthat G6ngora himself is accused of and is forcedto deny. But Lacan'sappeal to G6ngora as exem-plum of the alogical truth of the unconsciousadds a certain resonance to Barthes's libertarianideal.

The "third term" that will scramble the para-digm and unfix meaning recurs under differentnames in Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes: itis the "perversion" hat, quite simply, brings hap-piness (68); the "pluralism"that transcends"nat-ural" dualities (73); the "exemption"of meaningthat is reached, paradoxically,by following to itsvery end "le chemin du sens" 'the road to, or of,meaning' (90). It is, finally, neither female normale, but neuter:the only categorycapableof lift-ing "la marque intolerable du sens affiche, dusens oppressif" 'the intolerable mark of sign-posted meaning, of oppressive meaning' (128).Elsewherein Barthes, as here, this nonmeaning isassociated with "utopia" (later "atopia," the ne-ologism less "literary" and hence less com-promised by the oppressive weight of value): thusRaymond Queneau's Zazie is a "utopian charac-ter,"triumphantlyexternal to the exchangeof lin-guistic values (Essais critiques 130); Japan isdefined as absence itself, all wrappingpaper andno substance, its Zen antilogic "scrambling theparadigm" once more (L'empire des signes 95);Jules Verne'sIle mysterieuseis the empty space inwhich the heuristic and hermeneutic codes (dis-covery and interpretation) may range freely, in-dependent of their author (Nouveaux essaiscritiques 155). I suggest later that the space of theSoledades is also that of the "mysteriousisland,"unknown, yet strangelyfamiliar,shuttlingbetweensense and non-sense.The fragment "actif/passif" itself, however,suggests a heuristic or exploratory movement,which I employ in my reading of G6ngora. First,the construction of the paradigm: the conven-tional gendering of language and discourse inwhich culture causes sex and text to lie down to-gether in an apparentlynatural and eternalunion;second, transgression: the ways in whichG6ngora's reproduction of gender roles and ob-servation of genre rules might be seen as "scram-

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Barthes, Gongora, and Non-Sensebling" the paradigm constructed above; third,recuperation:the "readingout" of these apparentinnovations in the light of contemporary poeticpractice outside Spain; fourth and last, evacua-tion: the provisionaland hazardous attainmentofa state of nonmeaning or indeterminacyimmuneto the coercive policing of generic determinism.This journey through signification ("le chemin dusens") is exemplified in a passage in the firstSoledad on a wrestlingmatch, to which I give par-ticular attention.

But an initial question remains to be resolved:why the association of sex and text? There is someanxiety in modern criticism that genreis trivializ-ing and external. Indeed, Barthes himself makesthis objection at one point (Degre zero 42). Theattempt by a theorist such as Todorov to claimspeech acts as the origin of genre forms reflectsthe desire to upgrade genre by associating it withthe supposedly natural and authentic spokenword. Yet I would suggest that genre needs nojustification, for its very name reveals an essentialand often repressedcondition of writing:that lan-guage is always alreadygendered,that sex is neverabsent from discourse or value. The play I makeon gender and genre (frequent now in feministcriticism)4 is of course impossible in Romancelanguages, where one word designates both con-cepts: the Spanish genero, Italian genero, orFrenchgenre. The common origin of these words,the Latin genus, is cognate with gignere, "to pro-duce (of plants and animals)":naturesupplies thelanguage of culture. Quintilian uses the sameword for genders and genres in the phrases"genera nominorum" 'genders of nouns' and"genera dicendi" 'kinds of discourse.' The slip-page between sex and text is almost imperceptible,because of its very omnipresence. If language isa system of differences,then the sexual distinctionis uniquely efficacious, because uniquely "natu-ral." Thus Quintilian, again, speaks of a "natu-ral order" that precedes rhetorical invention:"men and women, day and night, sunrise andsunset" (9.4.23). In classical rhetoric (as inBarthes), text or discourse is a body: the figuresof speech articulate the oration as the movementsof the limbs do the body (2.13.9). But the virtuesof this body are male: "a solid and robust elo-quence" (10.1.2). A typical passage in Quintiliantreating a delicate subject (ornament) hedges itabout with appeals to male virtue and attacks onfemale vice:

But let this ornamentbe manly ["virilis"] nd strongandholy,and not seek effeminate moothnessand thelying color of cosmetics,but shine with blood andstrength. (8.3.6)5The male text is authentic and true, the femalecounterfeit and mendacious. The former is like amale athlete who has developedhis musclesby ex-ercise:handsome, yet well equipped for competi-tion (8.3.10). This image of eloquent discourse asthe rivalry of trained men recursin a passage inwhich figures of speech are likened to weapons:the orator will defeat his opponent with the devi-ous thrusts and counterstrokes of the linguisticsword (9.1.20).By the sixteenth century, literary genre isdivided according to gendered conceptions ofmatter and form. Scaliger'sPoetices libri septem(1561) states succinctly that the subjects of theepic, the highest genre, are "dux, miles, classis,equus, victoria" 'the commander, the soldier, thefleet, the cavalry,victory' (45). By contrast, the in-ferior lyric treats the matter of love: "curasamatorias" (47). The status quo is supported, asever,by an appeal to nature, changeless and eter-nal guarantor of meaning and value. The virtuesrequiredof the text are abstracted from an ideal-ized nature and projected back onto art as con-crete realities. Thus Tasso,in the Discorsi dell'artepoetica (1587), seeks to defend the epic's unity ofplot from the wayward violations of Ariosto'sromanzo:Thosethingswhicharefounded mmediatelyponNa-ture,andwhich n themselves regood andpraisewor-thy,have no relationshipwhatsoever o custom ....Such is the unityof plot, whichbringsby its veryna-turegoodnessandperfectiono thepoem,justas in ev-erypastandfuturecenturyt hasgiventhemand willgivethem. (Weinberg 47)But the object of this "natural" imitation in itshighest mode is unequivocallymasculine:"The il-lustrious of the epic poet is founded on the deedsof a supremely virtuous warrior, on acts ofcourtesy, of generosity, of piety, of religion"(Weinberg 648).But this masculine prestige is also that of theepic poet who seeks to coerce his audience intobelief by the recitation of manly exploits:Thepoet ... seeks o persuadehat thethings reatedby him areworthyof belief and of authority,and he

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Paul Julian Smithtries to obtainthisbelief in the minds[of hisaudience] tion. And this sense of woman as deprivation isthrough he authorityof historyandthrough he fame a commonplace of other disciplinesof the period.of illustrious ames,and to acquire enevolenceowards Physiologically,woman is held to be an imperfecthimselfthrough he praiseof virtueand of valorous version of the male: while man is hot, woman ismen. (Weinberg 86) cold. She consequently lacks the moral qualitiesassociated with high body temperature: courage,Comparethe exampleof "mediocritalirica"taken liberality, honesty (Maclean 32). Ethically, too,(like the passage above) from the Discorsi del woman lacks mans powersof judgment (Macleanpoemaeroico1594): ^50).Where woman possesses a quality unknownin man, it is always a failing, such as the love ofLa verginella simile a la rosa ornament and decoration with which she isch'in bel giardinsu la nativaspina chargedboth by theologians (Maclean 15)and, asmentresola e sicurasi riposa we have seen, by rhetoricians.ne greggen6 pastorse le avvicina. The final element in the paradigm,and one pe-culiar to Gongora and his time, is that of nation-The coy maiden s like the rose ality. The poets of sixteenth-century Spainwhichin a beautifulgardenon her nativethorn borrowed and assimilated both verse form andwhileshe remainsalone and in safetywhfle r she pnl ann set. poetic lexicon from Italy; yet, in spite, or perhapsno flock or shepherdwillapproachher. . . ' '(Tasso197) because, of this indebtedness, there remained apersistent anxiety about the enervating influenceLyric is a lady is a flower: gender, genre, and na- of the florid Tuscan on the severeCastilian. Forture link hands once more. And the floral motif the poet and rhetoricianFernandode Herrera(inrecurs on the following page: a work published in 1580) the terms of this rela-tion are implicitly gendered:Ma lo stile del lirico non e pieno di tantagrandezzaquantasi vedenell'eroico,ma abondadi vaghezze di Porque a [lengua] oscanaes muyflorida,abundosa,leggiadria,d e moltopiufiorito:perch6 fiorie gli or- blanday compuesta;perolibre, asciva,desmayadanamentiesquisitisono propridellamediocrita. demasiadamenteenterneciday muelle y llena deafectaci6n.... Pero la nuestraes grave,religiosa,But the style of the lyric does not contain as much honesta,alta, magnifica,suave,tierna,afectuosisimagreatnessas is found in the heroic,but it abounds n . . . es mas recatada observante, ueninguno ienelovelinessandgrace,and is farmoreflowery:because autoridadparaosarinnovaralgunacosa con libertad.flowersandexquisite rnaments reappropriateorthe . . .meanstyle. (Tasso198) FortheTuscanlanguage]s very lowery,opious,soft,and smooth;but free,sensual,shameless,and exces-The gender paradigm constructed under the sivelyemotional ndpliantand fullof affectation. . .auspices of nature is (of course) in no way inno- Butours s serious,moral,noble,high,magnificent, f-cent, not merely a case of "separate develop- fectionate,and full of feeling... it is morecautiousment." When male, utility, virtue, and epic are andcircumspect,nd no one hastheauthorityo makecontrasted with female,decoration,sensuality,and libertine nnovations. (GallegoMorell313)lyric, then each contrast is one not of true oppo-sition but rather of deprivation. In scholastic Where Italian has the feminine vices (sensuality,terms, the female elementsare not species relativa promiscuity), Spanish has the manly virtues, ca-(different but equal and even mutually constitut- nonic already in Quintilian's prescription for ro-ing) but species privata (different because of a bust and solid eloquence: virility, nobility,lack in the second term of the defining charac- religiosity.teristic of the first).6 Thus lyric irredeemably The slippage between aesthetic and morallacks the gravity of the epic, while epic (if neces- evaluation is particularly emphatic in Herrera'ssary) can encompass the delightfulness of the vituperationof the rhetoricalfeaturescharacteris-lyric: Tasso'sexamples (224), tellingly, are Vergil's tic of the Italians: the lascivious accumulation ofdepictions of Dido and Venus as huntresses in the words (congeries, polysyndeton) or the unnaturalAeneid. Classification is always already valoriza- mutilation of them, as with the diminutive:

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Barthes, Gongora, and Non-SenseLa lenguatoscanaesta llenade diminutoscon queseafeminay hacelascivay pierde a gravedad; erotieneconellosregaloy dulzura suavidad.Lanuestrano losrecibesino con mucha dificultady muy pocasveces.The Tuscananguage s full of diminutives hat makeit effeminateand lasciviousand lack gravity;but itgainswiththemsmoothness, weetness,and softness.Ours does not allow themexceptwithgreatdifficultyand most infrequently. (GallegoMorell512)7

The Spanish poet of the late sixteenth centuryis thus uniquely bound in the discursiveprison ofbinary, reactiveoppositions. But this constrictionis not experiencedas such; indeed, it is attributedto nature and assumed to be eternal. And theseoppositions are the enabling conditions of writ-ing: epic gravity is read for its difference fromlyric sensualism; Spanish severity for its manlydivergencefrom the genetically effeminate Italian(and the Italian for its divergencefrom the Span-ish). Such hierarchictaxonomies are not extrinsicto the practice of writing but, rather,constitutiveof it. Hence their extraordinaryprestige.Virile/nonvirile: as Barthes suggests, this is in-deed the archdistinction,enforcingvalue through-out the doxa. How, then does G6ngora appear totransgress the (extended) paradigm constructedabove? First, in the reproductionof gender roles.Spanish poetry of the period is massively male:man is the viewerand speaker;woman the objectof his gaze and of his amorous discourse. Thereis no Spanish equivalent of Louise Lab6 orGaspara Stampa, a woman poet to speak in praiseof man as object of desire.G6ngora's presentationof women and of men seems nonstandard whentaken in this context: they tend not to conform tothe codes of expectations by which they are con-ventionally defined. The anonymous protagonistis curiously nonvirile, led apparently at randomfrom one incident to another by the rustics hemeets on his way.8 The supposed cause of hiswanderings (misfortune in love), revealedonly be-latedly, plays no part in the narrative. His soledefining characteristic s an unmanly one: beauty.When tossed naked by the waves onto the islandin the opening lines, he is defined with referenceto the most common of homosexual myths, thatof Ganymede: "el que ministrarpodia la copa /a Jiipiter mejor que el garz6n de Ida" 'fitter cup-bearer than Ganymede / For Jupiter' (6-7).9Such passivity is hardly compatible with the hero

of epic. As one of G6ngora's contemporarycriticscomplained, he is merelya "mir6n" or "watcher."One object of his gaze is indeed woman: con-cealed in the trunk of a tree he watches the coun-try girls dancing and singing (262-65). But in oneother scene at least (that of the wrestling, towhich I return later), the display of male bodiesis offered explicitly for the gaze of women.Likewise,when the protagonistvisits the fisher-man in the second Soledad, gender roles seem atfirst to be firmly in place: the meal is served bythe latter's six daughters on linen tableclothswoven by the women themselves:"Sentados,pues,sin ceremonias,ellas / en torneado fresnola com-ida / con silencio sirvieron" 'All seated withoutceremony, they / The meal, which turned ashenvessels bore, / Served to the guest and father si-lently' (339-41). Yetthe father goes on to narratethe heroic fishing exploits of two of these women.The amazons set out on frailbarkson ragingseas,deaf to their father's entreaties. The first lands asea-bull, a feat described in mock epic terms:

Rindi6seal fin la bestia,y las almenasde las sublimesrocassalpicando,las pefas embisti6pefiaescamada,en rios de aguay sangredesatada.And when the brute had givenin at lastThe battlements f the tall rocksit splashedIn streamsof blood and water, he hardstoneAttacking,and itself a scalystone. (434-37)

Female huntress triumphs over male beast. Thesecond plunges her harpoon into a strange "mon-ster,"whose kind (or gender: "g6nero") s signifi-cantly indeterminate.Female activity here makesa piquant contrast with male inaction: the fatherwatches fearfully from the shore.More frequently, female and male attractionsare counterpoised:"tanto garz6n robusto, / tantaofrecen los alamos zagala" 'So much sturdyyouth/ So many maids the poplars could display'(1.643-44); "virgenes bellas, j6venes lucidos"'splendidyouths and lovely maidens' (1.732);"delgalan novio, de la esposa bella" 'Of handsomelover and of lovely bride' (1.1043). In such typi-cally elegant and balanced parallelisms, the an-titheses of gender difference are subsumed andneuteredby aesthetic equilibrium. It is the move-ment that G6rardGenette proposes as the "struc-

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Paul Julian Smithtural poetics" characteristic of French baroque:difference becomes contrary;contrary,symmetry;and symmetry, equivalence. The play of alterna-tives offered by the paradigm (either male or fe-male) becomes a reconciliation of opposites lentequal status by the poet's ornamental superfluity(both male and female).The rhetorical "body" of the Soledades ischaracterizedby the facile aestheticismand gratu-itous decoration enacted in such antitheses andchiasmuses. Its promiscuousornament is emphat-ically female, based primarily on verbal pattern-ing rather than on conceptual coercion. Inrhetoricalterms, the stress is on figures of speechrather than on figures of thought. In particular,G6ngora favors the linguistic strategies con-demned by the rigorous Herrera:the piling up ofnouns or adjectives for cornucopian display,as inthe catalog of birds of prey in the final hawkingscene; the affective emotionalism of the diminu-tive, so compromising to masculine gravity: thecalves and kids of domestic animals; the "bunnyrabbit" ("conejuelo")that here need not fear hu-mankind. And these featuresare, as we have seen,associated with Italian language and poetry. Forall its classicalreference, he immediateprecursorsof the Soledades are Italian: Guarini's tragi-comedy and Sannazzaro'spiscatorial eclogues.'0G6ngora, then, seems consistently to valorizethe traditionally negative, privative side of thegender paradigm: woman, ornament, lyric,Italy-these are the emphases of a work thataspires neverthelessto the highest regions of cul-tural prestige and to the utmost limits of linguis-tic complexity. To what genre, then, do theSoledades belong? Not surprisingly,the questionis an intricate one and was the source of muchcontroversy at the time of their appearance.G6ngora is immediatelyattackedfor treatingmat-ter more suited to lyric in an epic style (seeMartinez Arancon 32). The plot is said to be in-consequential and incoherent:Sale un mancebito, a principal figuraque Vm. in-troduce,y no le da nombre.Este fue al mary vino deel mar, inquesepaisc6moni paraqua;1lno sirve inode mir6n,y no dicecosa buenani mala,ni despegasuboca. ... Tampocodice Vm.jamas en que Pais oProvinciapasabael caso:todo lo cuales contraraz6n.Entera youth,the mainfigureyou introduce, ndyoudon'tevengivehima name.Thisyouthwentoff to sea

andcamebackfromthe sea,withoutanyoneknowinghow or why;he servesonlyas a watcher, ndsaysnei-ther good nor bad, indeeddoesn'topen his mouth.. . . Nor do youeversayin whichcountryorprovincetheactiontook place:all of which s quite contraryoreason. (Martinez Aranc6n 156)11

The plot lacks the "natural" unity requiredbyTasso, say, in which amorous adventure is safelysubordinate to heroic purpose and civic utility. Ifplace is uncertain,then so is time: one critic com-plains (perhaps unfairly)that at one point the rus-tics huddle over a log fire as in winter and atanother drip with sweat as in high summer. Thepoet is unequalto the demands of the heroicstyle;he lacksla constanciaque se requiere n continuarun estiloigual y magnifico, emplando a gravedad altezaconla dulzura y suavidad inteligible,y apoyando laelocuci6na ilustresentencias noblesy al firme roncode la buena fabula o cuento,que es la alma de laPoesia.the constancy hat is requiredn keepingup a consis-tentandmagnificenttyle,temperingravity ndhigh-nesswithsweetness ndintelligible raceandfoundingthe styleon illustriousandnoblethoughtsandon thesolid trunkof a good storyor plot, whichis the soulof poetry. (MartinezAranc6n189)Note once more the natural,organicistmetaphor:"the solid trunk." Like the flighty female of Ital-ian lyric or the mendacious cosmetic abused byQuintilian's unmanly oration, Gongora's text ispromiscuous, inconsistent, and insubstantial.This rhetoric of abuse is of course blindly andunknowingly gender-based. G6ngora's impropermixture of languages produces a "hermaphro-ditic" text whose lack of unity is inevitably com-pared to Horace's exemplum of the unnaturalimitation in the Ars poetica: the torso of thehandsome woman that ends in the tail of a blackfish. For Quevedo, G6ngora's great enemy,G6ngora's verses are "per-verses,"an "adultera-tion" of "chaste" poetry (MartinezAranc6n 84).The prudent poet (that is, man) will scorn reck-less ornament and sing (in Propertius's muchquoted phrase) "things that any girl can under-stand" (Martinez Aranc6n 103). Lyric is here as-similated to seduction, the male speakerovercoming the female listener by the force and

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Barthes, Gongora, and Non-Sensesubtlety of his eloquence, as before in Quintilianthe orator defeats his opponent with the trickyswordplayof his tongue. G6ngora's obscurity,his"jargon," effectively removeshim from this stan-dard economy of seduction and domination; hismonstrous conjunctions are irreducible to the bi-nary poles of emission and reception (active andpassive) implicit in any model of discoursebased,like the rhetorical, on the primacy of audienceand of communication.

G6ngora himself is not insensitive to thesecharges. In a famous defense he claims the eru-dition of his poetry sharpens reader's wits. Thereader is to take off the "corteza" ("bark" of atree or "skin" of a fruit) to revealthe mysterioustruth within (Martinez Arancon 43). This com-monplace of hermeneuticwith its organicist met-aphor reinserts the text into the general poeticmarketplace;the work may be peeled like an or-ange (albeit with difficulty) and consumed withpleasure and profit by the discriminating readeror gastronome. But if the Soledades are a natu-ral product, their form, substance, and origin (ina word, theirgenus) are uncertain even to their ad-mirers. Thus one supporter proposes, with thepoet himself, that matter and style are not bucolicbut heroic:Su principalasunto no es tratarcosaspastoriles, inola peregrinaci6ne unPrincipe, ersonagrande, u au-senciay afectos dolientesen el destierro,odo lo cuales materiagravey debetratarse fectuosamente,on elestilo gravey magnifico.Theirmainpurpose s to treatnotpastoralmattersbutthe peregrination f a Prince,a greatpersonage,hisloneliness nd sorrowfulmotions n exile,all of whichis seriousmatterand shouldbe treatedmovingly,withthe graveand magnificent tyle.(MartinezAranc6n141)The authority cited, as so often, is Tasso's Delpoema heroico. But G6ngora'sprincipalcommen-tator, Salcedo Coronel, proposes an elaboratemyth of origin based on the poem as natural ef-fusion of the solitary forest that is the poem's sub-ject. The Soledad is a silva, that is, "forest": asthe wind moves through the trees, causing themto vibrate in rustic harmony, so the poem flowsfrom the poet, rude and unpolished (fol. lv).12Such a genesis is evidentlyincompatiblewith boththe heroic dignity associated with the high style

and the manifest poetic craftsmanshipof the textitself. The embarrassment of G6ngora's sup-porters is in proportion to the generic indeter-minacy of his creation, a monster that appearstotransgressthe constrictive paradigmof sixteenth-century poetics.There is some evidence, however, that by theearly seventeenthcentury,in Italy at least, the ap-parently transgressive raits exhibitedby Gongorahad already fixed (or in Barthes's word "con-gealed") into topoi, mirror images of the doxathey replaced.The womanlyman is a frequentfig-ure in contemporary pastoral (as indeed inFrance). The manly woman is prominent even inthe drama of relatively conservative Spain.13These "scrambled"reproductionsof gender typesfind their fullest expression in the work ofG6ngora's most famous Italian contemporary,Giambattista Marino, particularly n his immenseepic L'Adone, published in 1623 but in prepara-tion for some thirty years before. Adonis is ofcourse exemplaryof the passive male desired bythe active female, and Marino gives the readerfre-quent extended depictions of his rather vapidfeminine beauty. Gongora's praise of the male istimid by comparison. The feminization of themale protagonist in Marino is accompanied, as inG6ngora, by a pervasivemovementfrom profit topleasure and by a subversion of the traditionalepic utility by lyric pleasantry.Unlike the Aeneid,say, the Adone is devoid of all civic responsibil-ity. Indeed, in the opening stanzas Marino defineshis work with scandalous accuracyas "molli versie favolosi e vani" 'soft verses, fabulous and vain'(1.10). It seems that the Spaniardswere correctintheir suspicion of the Italian inclination towardpromiscuous sensualism. Gongora's supportersstress his "sweetness"("dulzura")and tend to re-pressthe profit by which pleasurewas convention-ally justified. But in Italy the primacyof wonder("meraviglia")was the very precondition of suchmodern aesthetics as Tesauro's heory of "wit," inthe Cannocchiale aristotelico.

Moreover, this temporary and provisional tri-umph of pleasure and generic confusion as su-premepoetic criteria is no sudden innovation but,rather,an extensionof developments n the secondhalf of the sixteenth century. The history ofpoetics in the period is to a large extent the his-tory of the controversyover new genres:Ariosto'sromanzo and Guarini'stragicomedy.'4 Tasso him-self, defender of heroic unities, is the precedent

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Paul Julian Smithfor the wholesale incursion of lyric into epic,though he feels obliged to justify the amorous ad-ventures of his Christian knights by lending theevents an allegorical meaning. G6ngora'sdefensivestrategies are rather similar. But at times in Delpoema heroico Tasso's distinction between epicand lyric becomes tenuous indeed. He speculatesthat "se l'epico e '1 lirico trattasse le medesimecose co' medesimiconcetti, adoprerebbeper pocoil medesimo stile" 'if epic and lyric were to treatthe same subjects with the same ideas they wouldadopt more or less the same style' (Tasso227). AsBernard Weinberg explains, the abstracted, Pla-tonic Forms attributed by the moralists to achangeless and eternal nature are superseded bypragmaticliteraryforms based on individual liter-ary production and the desires of specific au-diences:Inthismodern onception f poetry,hemoralizingndgives way to an end of pleasure. ... The parts of thepoem and their interrelationship ill be seen in thetermsof thedelight . thattheycancontribute ...[P]racticendprecepts re n constantnteraction,withno fixity or permanence n eitherpart. (1104)

There is something of this sense of fluidity inG6ngora's cavalier approach to the generic doxathat he inherits, in his production of a work irre-ducible to preexistentgenre forms. But just as thepotential transgression nherentin the depictionofa womanly man is largely recuperatedby the con-gealed status of such self-conscious "perversion"by the time G6ngora is writing, so the releasefrom the repressivedemands of utility and civicresponsibility may crystallizeas the opposite (butequally exacting) requirementto ensure the plea-sure of the audiencethrough a constant paradeofconspicuous novelty. In other words, pleasure,once it becomes codified as obligation, can be asconstrictive as duty. The paradigmis not "scram-bled" but simply inverted, and the term that wasonce negativeis now positive. In the short run, au-diences in Spain and Italy would soon tire of ex-travagance and precipitate a "return" toneoclassicism. In the long run, the decline ofgenre as universal criterioncorrespondsto the riseof a repressivetolerance, which will prescribein-dividualism as the dominant and more insidiouslyoppressive mode.After construction, transgression,and recuper-ation comes the final stage of the paradigmatic

movement outlined at the beginning: that ofevacuation,or the achievementof a potentialnon-sense, or third term, that transcends the deadlyplay of alternation. I would suggest that theSoledades aspireto this (unrealizable)ambition tothe extent that the space and time they offer thereaderis (in Barthes'sdistinction) a-topian ratherthan u-topian. As we have seen, commentatorsareuneasy at the indeterminacyof G6ngora'sisland,which remains unnamed. Yet for all its classicaland Italianate resonance, the rustic topology isnot merely literary,not purelyreducible o utopianfancy. Thus the newlyweds are greeted with anepithalamiumreminiscentof Catullus, and Cupidand Neptune participate in the narrative;but thespeech on the perils of seafaring refers toColumbus, Magellan, and the historical circum-stance of Spanish discoveriesin the New World.15The dignity of classical myth is repeatedly dis-ruptedby gratuitoushumor in which homely mat-ter and elevated diction are made to clash headon: take, for example, the periphrastic eulogy ofthe ram: "El que de cabras fue dos veces ciento/ esposo casi un lustro" 'He, who for near a lus-trum was the spouse / Of twice a hundred she-goats' (1.146-47). G6ngora tells us that the goat'sdeath redeemed countless vines ("vides"), ablasphemous pun on the death of Christ, whichredeemed lives ("vidas").16 The burlesquedebunking of mythology, whether classical orChristian, is of course common in the period.What seems unusual is the intermittence of thisbathetic stance, the inconsequentiality of its ef-fect. In burlesque, the literary is deflated by thereal; in panegyric, the real is elevated by associa-tion with the literary.In G6ngora's twilight zoneof generic indeterminacy both terms float in anevaluative void, and the status of each is calledinto question. Likewise,praiseof the country andvituperation of the town are contemporarytopoi,rehearsed at length at one point in the poem(1.88-129). But Gongora's villagers do not live inharmonywith nature as one might expectbut rav-age and despoil it for their very cultured pur-poses.17 One example, as I demonstrate in amoment, is the chopping down of trees to con-struct a classically inspired arena for the nuptialgames. Once more, it is not that culturedshepherdsareinfrequentin contemporarypastoralbut rather that Gongora's rustics are alternatelycoarse and sophisticated, that they representno"gold standard" of immutableand naturalgood-

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Barthes, Gongora, and Non-Senseness by which the inauthentic deviants of the citymay be measured. Nature itself is "denaturalized"and can no longer be taken as the origin and fo-cus of permanent value.The Soledades thus seem to foreground someof the problems raised in Barthes's elusive andparadoxicalcommentaryon reading,Leplaisir dutexte. For Barthes the true scandal of textualpleasure is not that it is transgressivebut that itis "neutre" 'neutral'or 'neuter.'The text is not adialogue; rather,IIinstitueau sein de la relationhumaine-couranteune sorted'ilot,manifestea natureasocialedu plaisir(seul le loisir est social), fait entrevoir a verit6 scan-daleusede lajouissance:qu'ellepourrait ienetre, outimaginairede paroleetantaboli, neutre.It sets up in the heart of (current)human relationsasort of island,manifests heasocialnatureof pleasure(onlyleisures social),makesusglimpse hescandaloustruth of rapture:hat it could well be (if all linguisticimaginarys abolished)neuter. (28)The image of the island is peculiarly appropriatefor the space of the Soledades, at once within theocean of social and historical relation and sepa-rate from it, emphatically proclaimingits status asa unique and self-conscious work of art. Thereader is thus (in Barthes's word again) "cleft,"participating simultaneously in the hedonism ofculture and in the destruction of that culture. Thehedonism that reinforces the subject is known as"plaisir";the destruction that menaces and voidsit is "jouissance" (Plaisir 26). I would suggestthatG6ngora's simultaneous and contradictory en-gagement with and subversion of myth, nature,and gender reproducean analogous bifurcationinthe reader. And here history is of the essence."Jouissance" (like the "atopia" of the scrambledparadigm) is not the effete abstraction of a bour-geois idealism but the result of specific historicaldeterminants: "ce corps de jouissance est aussimon sujet historique"'this body of rapture s alsomy historical subject' (Plaisir 99). Paradoxically,one condition of the "floating"anachronistic sub-ject induced by the "writerly"text is the inevita-bility of biographical and sociologicalconfiguration. Likewise,the historical moment inwhich the Soledades werewritten is inscribed bothexplicitly and implicitly in the text itself. And itis the very intermittence of this historical con-

sciousness that ensures the irreducibility ofG6ngora's atopia and achronia, the impossibilityof reducing them to complacent, "literary" ab-stractions that will collude with the passivereaderin confirming his or her illusory sense of whole-ness and integrity.18We come now to a particularpassage, the wres-tling match at the end of the first Soledad, inwhich I hope to show that if we follow the pathof meaning ("le chemin du sens") to its very end,the conventional values of nature,myth, and gen-der may be "exempted"or neutralized and the ex-pansive free play of sense and sex achieved,albeitmomentarily.The topos itself is a test case, in thatthe description of games, a setpiece of the epic,comes to G6ngora saturated with the heroicvalueand resonance of the Iliad and the Aeneid.

Los arbolesque el bosquehabianfingido,umbrosocoliseoya formando,despejanel ejido,olimpicapalestrade valientesdesnudos abradores.Lleg6la desposadaapenas,cuandoferozardientemuestrahicierondos robustos uchadoresde sus miisculos,menos defendidosdel blancolino que del vello obscuro.Abrazaronse, ues, los dos, y luego-humo anhelandoel que no sudafuego-de reciprocosnudosimpedioscual duros olmosde implicantes ides,yedrael uno es tenaz del otro muro.Mafiosos,al fin, hijos de la tierra,cuando fuertesno Alcides,procuranderribarse, , derribados,cualpinosse levantanarraigadosen los profundos enos de la sierra.Premio os honraigual.Y de otros cuatrocifie las sienesgloriosarama,con que se puso terminoa la lucha.

Trees hat beforea feigning orestmade,And from the commonin the shade;OlympicwrestlinggroundForvaliantnakedmen.And hardlyhad the bridearrived here,whenTwosturdywrestlers howedFierceburningsinews,hidden more fromsightBy bodies'hair thanby their linen white.The one embraced heothernext,and then-One pantedsmoke,the otherfiery glowed-The doubleknot thwartingheirjoint intent,(Likethe toughelms withclingingvinesaround)

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Paul Julian SmithOne, ivy,hung upon the other,wall.A dexterousAntaeus either bentIf no strongHercules; ontrived o fall,And fallen,like the ruggedpine to riseDeep rooted in the bosomof the Earth.These wererewardedwith an equal prize.And soon anotherfourGirded heirtempleswith the branchof worth,And now was strifeno more. (1.932-50)This descriptionmay be seen in itself as an "in-tertext," a space or gap between the successivemovements of epic narrative. In the mostauthoritativeprecedent(Vergil'sAeneid) the gamesoccur in book 5, a necessaryinterludebetween thelyric and heroic high points of books 4 and 6: thelove of Dido and Aeneas and the descent into the

underworld, respectively. In Vergil, however,thegames have a place in the martial and civic visionof the poem as a whole: the same men now com-peting at sport will soon be engaged in the genu-ine battles required for the founding of Romeitself, the transcendentalmission of the epic. Theethos is patriarchal: he games are a tributeto Ae-neas's dead father,a symbol of the values and cul-ture the soldier-athletes are transporting fromTroy.In the inconsequential narrative of theSoledades the games have no such function: theparticipantsareunknown, theirmotive is derisory:the celebration of a marriage between two(equally anonymous) villagers.Yetthe passage oc-curs in an emphatic, indeed climactic, position atthe end of the first poem, and (as G6ngora'scon-temporarycommentatorsdemonstrate)it is sono-rous with classical echoes. "Sons of the earth,"the wrestlersare inevitablyassimilated to Antaeus,opponent of Hercules, who regained his strengthon touching the ground. But this is only the mostemphatic of heroic resonances: the image of thefallen man as uprootedpine, for example,also oc-curs in Vergil'sboxing match. The appeal to theblind forces of nature(earthand tree)suggests theunmediated closeness of the peasants to theirland. But, typically, the space in which they meetis that of classical culture: the colosseum orOlympic palestra formed by the chopping downof the trees. And the trees themselves are by nomeans innocent: "Trees hat before a feigning for-est made." Even nature in its primal, virgin stateis a deceit, an imitation no less mendacious thanthe fictions of classical myth. The wrestlers arenaked, but they are clothed by culture: the liter-

ary reminiscence of a practice (the nakedness ofathletes) common in antiquity but unknown inCatholic Spain. Inversely, his classicalabstractionand intemporality s compromised by specific,ma-terial detail: the dark body hair ("vello obscuro")that covers their limbs. The wrestlersare at onceand alternatelynaturaland cultural, classical andcontemporary.

This spectacle of the male body is explicitlyproposed for the female witness: "Lleg6 ladesposada apenas" 'And hardlyhad the bride ar-rived there.' The contemporary commentatorSalcedo Coronel goes on to suggestthat the shadyauditorium is intended for the "serranas"'villagegirls' and other female spectators to sit in (fol.185v). At this point, then, Gongora seems to beproposingan alternativeperspectiveto that of thehegemonicmale gaze. Salcedo Coronelcites JuliusCaesar Scaliger as an authority on classicalgames. But Scaliger himself notes that Augustusprohibitedwomen from watchingathleticcontests,lest they be stirred to lascivious thoughts by thenaked bodies of the male contestants, smearedwith oil and scattered with dust (37). Gongora'sinsistence on the presence of women at his wres-tling match thus seems to carry a particular sig-nificance, for it implies that at least the possibilityof a female desire can be acknowledged andcelebratedwithin the poem. Moreover,the publicdisplay of physicality entailed by wrestling itselfis alien to the prudishSpanishmale: the commen-tator refers to bouts he has witnessed in Italy,"donde mas ordinariamente se exercitanen estecertamen" 'where they more commonly partici-pate in this contest,' and is anxious to assure theSpanish readerthat eventhere,in dangerouslylas-civious Italy, contestants wear tunic and shorts(fol. 186v).Another curious transgression of the gendercode of representation, his time purely"literary,"is the appeal to the images of the elm and the vineand of the ivy and the wall to describe the menclinging together. The traditional meaning ofthese topoi is generally that of the sexual unionof marriage.As a precedentfor the first, the com-mentator cites an epistle from Ovid to his absentwife (fol. 183r). And for the second image herefers the reader to an epithalamium by Catullus(fol. 380r). G6ngora'simages are thus deprivedoftheir canonic signification: they cannot meanwhat they suggest but simultaneously evoke andannihilate the culture from which they are drawn;

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Barthes, Gongora, and Non-Sensethey flatter the readerby citing a common erudi-tion but threaten him or her by severing thatknowledge from the value on which it depends.The pure virility of male contention is displacedby the domesticity of marriage.The commentator, however, cannot make ex-plicit such unwelcomeassociations. He is more ea-ger to elucidate the result of the contest:Descuido ue dedonLuisdezir,queseis uchadoresue-ron premiados igualmente;luego el palio no leconsigui6ninguno? fueron eis los queauiaparasoloeste certamen?Don Luismadea mistaken saying hatsixcontestantsweregivenequalreward; id none of themthereforegainthe prize?or were heresixprizesfor thiscontestalone? (fol. 183v)In Italy, once more, the custom is that one fighterwill take on all comers until he emergesas the un-equivocal winner and gains the prize. The bathosof Gongora's inconclusive ending is immediatelyapparentand somewhatdisturbing.Perhaps,how-ever,the refusalto assert priority ("Thesewere re-wardedwith an equal prize")is not a mistakebut,rather,a symptom of a general process by whichheroic language is systematicallydeprivedof valueand assimilablemeaning. The reified, "congealed"values of the topos, ever present in the restrictedconfines of G6ngora's echo chamber,give way toan indefinite and indeterminate atopia, in whichsignifier is floated off from signified, while simul-taneously proclaimingthe absenceof the latter. InPascal's famous formula: "Figureporte presenceet absence" 'Figuresbring presenceand absence,'but nowheremore so than in the resonantvoid ofGongora's empty epic.The significance of the Soledades, then, isprimarily, if at all, literary, self-reflexive. Thegames are the space of a motivelessversatilityandingenuity, of a poetic performance in which thetextual body flexes its figurative limbs. ForBarthes, we remember,meaning is a deadly pa-rade: "tout sens bien form6 est une parade: ac-couplement et mise a mort" 'all well-formedmeaning is a parade: coupling together and put-ting to death.' In G6ngora, the threat of death isdispersed (the wrestlers'performance is derisory)and evaluative meaning with it. The equation ofpoetics and gymnastics may seem farfetched, but

it also occurs in Renaissance theorists. Scaligertreats the origin and practice of the classicalgames underthe heading "Historicus"in his Poe-tices libri septem, affirming that games are mutefictions ("fabulae"), while fictions are speakinggames (37). Like the "well-lit body" to whichBarthes draws attention in what he styles thesmall textual "theater" of the marquis de Sade(Sade 137), Gongora's wrestlersbenefit from thesensual privilege of enshrinement in desire. Theevacuating process is similar to that described byBarthes in the Mythologies, in his famous essayon wrestling.The audience has no concern for anauthentic outcome to the spectacle: "Il [le public]se confie a la premierevertu du spectacle, qui estd'abolirtout mobile et toute consequence" 'Theytrust to the primaryvirtue of spectacle, which isthe abolition of all causes and effects' (14).Gongora's text, motiveless and inconsequential,embodies the virtue of pure spectacle.In Le_on, the inaugural lecture Barthes deliv-ered on taking up the Chair of Semiology at theCollege de France (1978), he ponders once morethe relation between language and power.His po-sition is extreme:all languageis potentiallyfascist,ever vulnerable to coercion: "L'utopie, bien en-tendu, ne preservepas du pouvoir: l'utopie de lalangue est recupereecomme langue de l'utopie-qui est un genre comme un autre" 'Utopia is, ofcourse, no protectionagainst power:the utopia oflanguage is recuperated as the language ofutopia-which is a genre like any other' (25). Thewould-be utopias of libertariandiscourses of May1968 (social and sexual) have been fatally com-promisedby the rigidityof their enunciation. Thetext itself, by contrast, is the image of"depouvoir" 'un-power,'pushing everoutwardorbackwardto new, unclassified, and atopian posi-tions (34). In this sense of the word, the Soledadescan be seen as a "text." Their provisionaland in-termittentunfixing of nature,culture,and gendertends to displace both writer as active, virile ori-gin of coherent meaning and reader as passive,nonvirile recipientof it. PerhapsBarthes and La-can werenot mistakenin claimingG6ngora as thepoet of "non-sense." His great poem might thenserve as the exemplary performance of "un-power."9Queen Mary College, University of LondonLondon

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93aul Julian SmithNotes

I The definitive study of G6ngora's use of the citationalmode remains Vilanova'smonumental Lasfuentes y los temasdel Polifemo.2 For a discussion of the nomadic openness of the silva andits relation to the structureof the Soledades, see Molho 79-81.3 Trans.mine. All quotations from the Soledades, both the

Spanish and the English, are from Wilson's edition. Elsewhere,unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.4 See, e.g., Kirkpatrick'sstudy of a Spanish woman writer'sattempt to transgress "generic" definitions.5 Here I cite my translation of the Latin, since the pub-lished version repressesthe "bodily" qualities that are vital tomy argument.6 This distinction is treated by Maclean (44-45).7 Such passages demonstrate that the "female" virtues ofsweetness and phonetic play were indeed valued but that theirposition was always subordinate to their loftier "male" coun-terparts.8 See Vilanova's "Peregrino" for a detailed study ofG6ngora's impersonal protagonist.9 See Smith for a study of the divergent representations ofmale beauty in Spanish and Italian lyric of this period.10Molho cites Poliziano's silvae and Tasso's Aminta asprecedents for the Soledades (44-46). For a modern exampleof the gendered critical evaluation of G6ngora and his antece-dents, see Wilson's contention that G6ngora's world is "morerobust, less effeminate" than that of Sannazzaro and Mon-temayor (G6ngora xv).11The beginning of this passage is also cited by Beverleyinhis discussion of G6ngora's conflictive conflation of epic andlyric (Introduction 33).12 See Molho's discussion of silva as both verse form andphysical topography (43-52).13See McKendrick for a full-length study of this phenome-non and its importance in Spain.14 This statement is a drastic compression of what was in

reality a hugely complex situation, minutely documented byWeinbergthroughout his study.15 Beverleygives a suggestiveaccount of the "mediated" re-lation between text and history, which he claims produces the"intra-historic" andscape of the Soledades (Introduction 55).

16 Wilson sees such passages as "lapses from taste"(G6ngora xvii), but such a judgment assumes, against the evi-dence of the text itself, that G6ngora shared the bias of somemodern critics toward unity of diction and sentiment.

17 For treatmentsof the relation between town and countryin the Soledades see Gornall's essay and Woods 158-66.18 Unlike more traditional critics (such as Alonso and

Jones), who have attempted to prove the "unity" of theSoledades and of G6ngora's poetry in general, Beverleyarguesstrongly for the openness of the text and its consequent inter-rogative effect on the reader (Introduction 56-61).19When this article was written, I had not seen John R.Beverley's excellent full-length study Aspects of Gdngora'sSoledades, in which the author treats in greater detail manypoints he had previously raised in the introduction to his edi-tion of the Soledades. One chapter begins with an epigraphby Lacan in which metaphor is said to derive from the "pointat which sense comes out of non-sense" (26); and two othersare devoted to areas discussed in my study: "Epicand Pastoral"(59-69) and "City and Countryside" (70-79). Despite his in-terest in the theory of genre, however,Beverleydoes not referto the question of gender that I take to be essential here.This article was first read as a paper at the FrenchResearchSeminars of the University of Cambridge and Queen MaryCollege, London, in 1984, and at the Annual Conference ofthe Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland in1985. My thanks to those who contributed to the discussionsafter the paper on each of these occasions and more particu-larly to O. N. V. Glendinning for his comments on an earlyversion of the article.

Works CitedAlonso, Ddmaso. La lengua poetica de G6ngora. Madrid:CSIC, 1935.Barthes, Roland. Critique et verite. Paris: Seuil, 1966.

.Le degre zero de l'ecriture.Nouveaux essais critiques.Paris: Seuil, 1972.L'empire des signes. Geneve: Skira, 1970.. Essais critiques. Paris: Seuil, 1964..Leon. Paris: Seuil, 1978.Mythologies. Paris: Seuil, 1957.Le plaisir du texte. Paris: Seuil, 1973.. Roland Barthespar Roland Barthes.Paris:Seuil, 1980.Sade, Fourier, Loyola. Paris: Seuil, 1971.Beverley, John R. Aspects of G6ngora's Soledades. Amster-dam: Benjamin, 1980.. Introduction.Soledades. By Luis de G6ngora. Madrid:Catedra, 1979.

Gallego Morell, Antonio. Garcilaso de la Vegay sus comen-taristas. 2nd ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1972.

Genette,Gerard."Une po6tiquestructurale?"TelQuel 7 (1961):13-19.G6ngora, Luis de. The Solitudes of Don Luis de Gdngora.

Trans. Edward Meryon Wilson. Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 1965.Gornall, J. F. G. "G6ngora's Soledades: 'Alabanza de aldea'without 'Menosprecio de corte'?" Bulletin of HispanicStudies 59 (1982): 21-25.Jones, Royston O. "The Poetic Unity of the Soledades ofG6ngora." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 31 (1954):189-204.Kirkpatrick, Susan. "On the Threshold of the Realist Novel:Gender and Genre in La gaviota." PMLA 98 (1983):323-40.Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits I. Paris: Seuil, 1966.Maclean, Ian. TheRenaissanceNotion of Woman.Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 1980.Marino, Giambattista.L'Adone. Ed. Giuseppe Guido Ferrero.


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Barthes,Gongora,and Non-SenseTorino: Einaudi, 1976.Martinez Aranc6n, Ana. La batalla en torno a G6ngora(seleccion de textes). Madrid: Bosch, 1978.

McKendrick, Melveena. Woman and Society in the SpanishDrama of the Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,1974.Molho, Maurice. Semdntica y poetica (Gdngora, Quevedo).Barcelona: Critica, 1977.Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus]. Institutio oratoria.Trans. H. E. Butler. London: Loeb, 1922.Salcedo Coronel, Jose Garcia de. Soledades . .. comentadas.Madrid: Domingo Gonzalez, 1636.Scaliger, Julius Caesar. Poetices libri septem. Lyons: Vincen-

tius, 1561.Smith, Paul Julian. "Descriptio pueri: Praise of the Young

Hero in Some Poets of Renaissance Spain and Italy."Studi secenteschi 24 (1983): 57-66.Tasso,Torquato.Discorsi dell'artepoetica e del poema heroico.Ed. Luigi Poma. Bari: Laterza, 1964.Todorov, Tzvetan. "L'origine des genres." Les genres du dis-cours. Paris: Seuil, 1978. 44-60.Vilanova, Antonio. Las fuentes y los temas del Polifemo de

Gongora. 2 vols. Madrid: CSIC, 1957.. "El peregrinode amor en las Soledades de G6ngora."Estudios dedicados a Menendez Pidal. 7 vols. Madrid:CSIC, 1952. 3: 421-60.

Weinberg,Bernard.A History of LiteraryCriticism in the Ital-ian Renaissance. 2 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Woods, M. J. The Poet and the Natural World n the Age ofGdngora. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978.

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