"Pero el diablo del romance": estudios sobre poesía novohispana

According to Gabriel Zaid, Mexican poetry was born both Catholic and modern. This was so because, from its very beginnings, the poetry of New Spain became part of the great lyrical tradition of the Spanish Golden Age. Verse was the most important artistic expression throughout the three centuries of the Viceroyalty, and poetry itself became a way of social life: poems were composed at the slightest occasion, whether to celebrate the arrival of a new viceroy, to mourn the death of another, to welcome a new archbishop, or even to commemorate a flood. Despite the extraordinary abundance of poetic production, literary history has largely been shaped by a nationalist approach that has uncritically repeated the same judgements time and again. This volume brings together twenty-four studies that examine the lyric expressions of New Spain using the tools provided by the long-established—yet too often disparaged—discipline of philology. From poetic contests, villancicos, and the influence of Gongorism to the works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the study of her literary models, these essays restore the poetry of New Spain to its rightful place within the great literature of the Spanish Golden Age.