Todas las obras de Don Luis Gongora en varios poemas; recogidos por Don Gonzalo de Hozes y Cordova, natural de la ciudad de Cordova

by Luis de Góngora y Argote | edited by Gonzalo de Hozes y Cordova

Madrid: Imprenta del reyno for Alonso Pérez, 1634

[14], 232 leaves | 4to | ¶^8 ¶¶^4 ¶¶¶^2 A-2F^8 | 197 x 145 mm

Second edition prepared by de Hozes of the collected works of Baroque Spanish poet and playwright Luis de Góngora y Argote. This is the third collected edition overall. Both the 1633 and 1634 de Hozes editions closely follow the structure and formatting of the 1627 Obras en verso del Homer español prepared by Juan López de Vicuña. WorldCat 878495823, which reports a possible 1623 edition of his works—and to which no holdings are attached—appears to represent one of the 1640s editions edited by Garcia de Salcedo Coronel. ¶ Born in Córdoba, Spain, Góngora is one of the most renowned writers of the Spanish literary canon, as well as a primary figure of the Golden Age. Utilizing labyrinthic metaphors and witticisms, his work is known for embodying an ornate style. Góngora's work often featured mythological and classical references, and he explored various themes, including love, nature, and religious subjects. Góngora’s work also features representations of Afro-Iberian agency and aesthetic expression in early modern Spain, as explored by leading scholarship on the matter. ¶ In his intricate fashion Góngora, referred to as culteranismo, frames a dialogue between two Black women that appears in fol. 73v of this very copy. Africans and Afro-descendants were an integral part of the cultural, social, and religious dimensions of early modern Spanish society. Beyond status as enslaved, they were artisans, traders, dancers, court trumpeteers, and members of urban confraternities (Fracchia). The dialogue in these Obras presents a form of Castilian understood as habla de negros by Golden Age writers and present-day scholars alike. Habla de negros, translated by scholar Nicholas Jones as “Black Talk,” was a dialect present in villancicos, poems, and plays of the “fifteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain and Portugal—a span of time when the creation and performance of Africanized Castilian was in vogue—habla de negros circulated as a catchphrase used not only to identify and mark, but also to deride how black Africans, mainly slaves, spoke Spanish” (Jones). After decades of this dialogue being read as solely a form of proto-minstrelsy, scholars of race in the early modern world have been revisiting habla de negros dialogues such as the one contained in these Obras in innovative, novel ways: “An alternative reading of habla de negros that, while acknowledging that this comical and burlesque speech employs racist appropriations of Africanized Spanish…the presence of Africanized Spanish in Góngora’s poem [also] underscores the possibilities of personhood found in black Africans [by early modern writers]” (Jones). ¶ Góngora's influence on Spanish literature and poetry cannot be overstated. His innovative use of language and poetic techniques had a profound impact on subsequent generations of poets, and he is often credited with laying the foundation for the development of modern Spanish poetry. This work will be particularly relevant to students, scholars, and collectors interested in the fields of Renaissance literature and the Global Early Modern. ¶ No complete copy of his collected works this early has appeared at auction since 1976, nor do we find any copies of this edition in North America.

CONDITION: Contemporary limp parchment. ¶ Multiple gatherings and bifolia loose or detached, the sewing having almost completely perished; scattered marginal staining and surface dirt; some leaves darkened with age; O sheet dampstained; front fly-leaf and final text leaf with long rectangular stains. Binding completely detached from the text; upper third of the spine lost, and roughly an inch at the top of the rear cover; parchment cockled and soiled.

REFERENCES: USTC 5007019 ¶ Nick Jones, "Cosmetic Ontologies, Cosmetic Subversions: Articulating Black Beauty and Humanity in Luis de Góngora’s “En la fiesta del Santísimo Sacramento”," Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 15.1 (2015), p. 26-54.; Carmen Fracchia, 'Black but Human': Slavery and Visual Art in Habsburg Spain, 1480-1700 (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Item #648