Overview

Textual Agency examines the massive proliferation of poetic texts in fifteenth-century Spain, focusing on the important yet little-known cancionero poetry – the largest poetic corpus of the European Middle Ages. Ana M. Gómez-Bravo situates this cultural production within its social, political, and material contexts. She places the different forms of document production fostered by a shifting political and urban model alongside the rise in literacy and access to reading materials and spaces. At the core of the book lies an examination of both the materials of writing and how human agents used and transformed them, giving way to a textual agency that pertains not only to writers, but to the inscribed paper. Gómez-Bravo also explores how authorial and textual agency were competing forces in the midst of an era marked by the institution of the Inquisition, the advent of the absolutist state, the growth of cities, and the constitution of the Spanish nation.

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9781442667518

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Reviews

‘This is an important book that opens the door to formulating a broad synthesis leading to a deeper understanding of how cancioneros came into being, the social role they and poetry in general played in the construction of authorial personas in fifteenth century Castile.’ -- E. Michael Gerli * Renaissance Quarterly, vol 68:03:2015 * ‘Reversing the aristocratic trend in the analysis of medieval literature, while opening academic field to more complex social and economic elements of exploration, is without a doubt the most significant achievement of this monograph.’ -- Óscar Perea-Rodriguez * SHARP News vol 25:01:2016 *

Author Information

Ana M. Gómez-Bravo is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington.

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