Lazarillo vs. El lazarillo

It's common enough to use El Lazarillo, or El Quijote when referring to the books, but I have students (mostly natives) who persist in saying "el Lazarillo" when referring to the character. This bespeaks to me a false etymology, i.e., that Lazarillo gets his name because he is a lazarillo (blind man's guide) when it is actually the other way around: lazarillo as a word denoting a child who guides a blind man derives from the book. Am I wrong about this?

Lorca Grave Dispute

Erika passed along this news story, thinking it might be of interest to the Peninsularistas site. It is indeed interesting, although how Lorca managed to have descendants escapes me. Any thoughts?

In praise of tobacco

In an 1853 rag called La Ilustración, billed as a "Periodico político, científico, moral, estético y religioso," I found some choice snippets from Spanish romantic Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, friend to Larra and Espronceda. Here is a fine example:

Aunque andrajoso, abigarrado y feo
El soldado español vaya a la guerra
Y tenga que vivir el merodeo
Y descansar sobre la dura tierra
Porque las corbas uñas de un hebreo
Roban la plata que el tesoro encierra,
Derrotará al Calmoco y al Cosaco
Si no le faltan pólvora y tobaco.

But what really struck me was the bit quoted as an epigraph to the article I was looking at (which of course extolled the medicinal and economic value of tobacco). I think it will be of interest to both those pipe aficionados among us and to those wishing to follow up on the bird/body-part theme:

Yo exclamé fumando: ¡al cielo plegue
Que salga un golondrino en el sobaco
Al que sea enemigo del tobaco!

Okay, I'm wrong. Just looked up "golondrino" on the Real Academia, and here's the definition they give: "Med. Inflamación infecciosa de las glándulas sudoríparas de la axila." I still like the bird image better.

More Bawdy Birds

Evangelista, the author of my satiric hunting text, adopts a pose that reminds me somewhat of the burlesque sketches of Mark Twain. Twain wrote a piece called “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper” in which the narrative voice is that of a naïve urbanite who knows nothing of agriculture, but tries to brazen it out anyway (writing of shaking ripe turnips out of their trees, for example) and sparks a riot in the process.

Evangelista’s narrative voice is similar. He starts off confidently claiming “Pues que a Nuestro Señor plugo darme sabiduría y sciencia sobre todo hombre del mundo de los que hoy son nacidos, yerro sería en no dejar alguna obra provechosa a los que hoy son e adelante serán … acordé de ocupar la fantasía en componer esta poca y perfecta obra, la cual es la sustancia de toda la cetrería que hoy se podría pensar ni hablar en todo el mundo…”

And then he’s off and running with gems such as: “[los alfaneques] nunca tosen ni escupen, que no hay cosa más aborrecida para el cazador que halcón cosico o tosegoso.”

Fradejas Rueda, the editor, says that Evangelista’s humorous style is based on tautology or platitude, puns, and irony. By “platitude” he means the deadpan statement of the obvious in the guise of wisdom. Thus, “when you take them (alfaneques) hunting, make sure they have both wings, because they fly better with two than with one.”

Occasionally the wisdom reaches sublime levels of silliness, of the “shaking turnips” variety. In English, “you have to believe that these borníes are de carne, by the grace of God, because if they were de pescado, once you took them out of the water they would die, and you would have to make them perches under the water, and just think what that would be like in Segovia or Avila in the winter! And instead of jingle bells you would have to make them wear gourds, because otherwise they would drown, since they don’t know how to swim.”

Finally, we get this advice regarding miliones:

“If they ask you of what use is such an unusual bird, tell them it’s for stuffing up the asses of people who ask too many questions, with the tail sticking out so that if one wanted to ascend to heaven, one could do so using the tail instead of stairs.”

And people wonder why I love the Middle Ages.

Another notice from El Comercio

June 24, 1854

TEATRO

Un joven extranjero ocupó anoche uno de los asientos delanteros de cierto palco de primera fila; y como el excesivo fetor de sus piés era tan fuerte como el de una sepultura recien descubierta, que no lo podían soportar las personas de la platea que estaban debajo de él, se le suplica tenga la bondad de no concurrir á ese local en lo posterior para que no enfermen gravemente los que tengan la desgracia de sentarse a su inmediación.

Los que salieron de la platea con dolor de cabeza.

Tauromaquia

Something I found in the newspapers I'm looking at here in Lima.

El Comercio 4131 Miercoles 4 de Mayo 1853

TOROS, VACAS Y OSA.—Sobresaliente función para el Domingo 8 de Mayo.

Nada puede serle mas grato al que está encargado de un establecimiento (ó lo que es mas el empresario de este) que poder satisfacer los deseos de los que lo honran con su asistencia: este es el caso en que se halla el empresario de la plaza de Acho comprometido con muchas personas respetables á fin de que se vuelva a exhibir otra corrida en que se juegan vacas las que serviran para mascaras advirtiendo que á mas de los toreros enmascarados podrán lidiarlas bajo el mismo disfraz toda persona decente que guste hacerlo. Para dár tiempo á que puedan vestirse los toreros después de jugados los cuatro primeros toros, tendra lugar la lucha de la Osa con un toro pues habiendose hecho una prueba el lunes 25 ante muchos espectadores ha sido tal la bravura de ese animal que la empresa no ha dudado en comprarla en un precio sumamente fantástico sin mas objeto que el de satisfacer al público los deseos que tuvo de ver lidiar al Oso en tardes anteriores.

I remember reading about bear baiting in Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World. I got curious after finding this gem, so I looked up the Wiki. The whole notion of a blood sport somehow becomes more sinister when bears are involved. Does anyone know if pitting bulls (or bears) against other animals was common in Spain? I had never heard of it in Latin America until I saw this ad, and in fact I'd be curious to know what kind of bear was used. One thing that's interesting in my context is that, according to the Wiki, bear baiting was outlawed in England in 1835, which only follows the outlawing of the slave trade by two years. Makes sense, but still surprising to see the tides of humanitarianism, philanthropy and sympathy rising so uniformly. The Wiki also mentions bull baiting, but doesn't put the two together. Perhaps a Peruvian innovation?

Job List

The job list is out. Anyone looking? Or is this too public a venue in which to discuss these things?

Hunting and Yikes!

The yikes! is for Kent's magazine cover. Holy cow.

Regarding my paper: I'm thinking of doing something like "Evangelista's Hunting Parody and the History of Laughter." Suitably vague and all-encompassing, no?

Tired old topic

However, also very timely. I'm sorry about lack of freshness but could not resist posting this. I think I'll use it as the first day of my conversation class, to see what comes up. Caretas is the major weekly newsmagazine of Peru, something like Time or Newsweek. This is this weeks issue.

Any solutions?

Mike's post raises issues all of us face as we engage in the daunting task of narrowing down a topic. I'm wondering where you are at in the process, Mike? Which questions have you chosen to tackle?

More hunting humor

My problem with this paper is that I have several competing directions I want to go with it. First, I was interested in looking at the “fable” and the overall parody to which it’s attached, through the lens of humor theory. What makes it funny? How does the humor work?

Second, theories of parody. Is a parody essentially deconstructive of the text it parodies? Is parody, as a self-aware text, ipso facto a form of metafiction? Some feel that a parody is inherently hostile to the text being parodied; a parody of hunting manuals, therefore, would have to be essentially anti-hunting. This view completely ignores the fact that for a parody to work it has to assume both a writer and readers well-versed in the text being parodied. Take Don Quixote, for example. A broad and brutal parody of chivalric fiction, no? But in order to write it Cervantes had to have been well-versed in the texts he was making fun of and his audience had to be just as well-versed in order to understand half of the jokes. Is mockery inherently an attack? Or is it an homage?

Third, this goes to function. Does the parody exist as satire, in other words as a text whose purpose is to expose and ridicule the follies of the class of people who devote excess amounts of time to hunting? Maybe so, but the tone of this text is more along the lines of Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, which exposes folly, certainly, but all the while recognizes the humanity of the fools themselves.

Fourth, I wanted to look specifically at the “fable” within the parody, in which a falcon (masculine symbol) basically gets gang-raped by a bunch of sexually ambivalent shorebirds. I was particularly interested in what I saw as the “problem” of sexual violence used for comic effect. Problem is, this problem is more a 20^th century problem than a medieval problem.

Fifth, I could look at it in terms of discourses of masculinity and effeminacy and situate it within an overall fifteenth-century critique of effeminacy, but I suspect that to do justice to this I would have to be much better versed in Freudian, feminist, and/or queer theory than I am.

Sixth, I’m now leaning toward a title of “Of Birds and Bawdy Bodies” and limiting myself to an examination of sexual and scatological imagery, through the lens of humor theory, but that seems like a cop out.

So I’m being pulled in many directions at once and have to narrow it down, and fast.

Medieval humor

Some of you know that I’m working on a paper about a fifteenth-century parodic fable found in a parody of hunting manuals. The fable itself is quite a hoot, but I’m having trouble honing in on a topic.

One thing I’m having trouble with is figuring out how to describe the humor, not just of the fable, but of the overall parody. The writer’s style of humor has been described as based on platitudes. I’m wondering what you all think.

Here’s a sample. The parody plays on the fact that most hunting manuals of the period cover the minutiae of various birds of prey in great detail: where they’re from, what characteristics to look for in a good hunting falcon, etc. So in the entry on neblies (peregrine falcons), the writer concludes:

“Estos neblíes son aves que no hay hombre del mundo que sepa en qué tierra se crian; pero los que algo sabemos todavía pensamos que nacen do quiera que ello sea, que si no naciesen, no valdrían una Blanca, que nunca vistes cuán para poco son los que están por nacer.”

(Loose translation: There is no man alive who knows where these neblíes come from, but those of us who know a bit about it think they hatch, wherever in the world it may be. For if they didn’t hatch, they wouldn’t be worth a dime, for you’ve never seen anything as worthless as those that haven’t hatched yet).

Or, how about this one (just in English): "Hawks are very handsome birds ..., even though those from Castile are evil and perverse, especially the ones from Galicia, which fart a lot."

Any thoughts?

Panama begins in LAX

Here's something in the way of Mike's legendary travel accounts (though not so legendary, I suspect) which I wrote for the Blog last night.

I’m flying to Lima via Panama City on Copa, an airline exiled from the Tom Bradshaw Intl. Terminal to far-flung Termianal 6. I admit that the last time I flew to Peru we ended up in Chile in the worst air travel nightmare of all, but at least LAN has it together at the terminal. Copa, not so much. Picture three stations, eight or so employees, all looking very very busy, and a line that just doesn’t move. It doesn’t move so much that I begin having fantasies of large brooms sweeping away the clusters of people cluttering the area in front of the counter. The four Russians directly before me in line have at least 15 bags of different colors between them. One of the bags is an old, leather sample case with straps holding it together, such as one would expect to fine in the trunk of a car also carrying material for a nuclear weapon. People tend to take vast numbers of suitcases, all of which must be weighed—some paid for, some not, but all negotiated—when they travel to Panama. Or they take dogs, or electronics, which also must be paid for and wrapped in cellophane (except the dogs). A couple who had purchased a miniature bulldog in the states for import to Panama stood at the counter taking up space and attention in one form or another for at least forty five minutes. At one point I looked behind me and half the line was seated on the floor. A gentleman who reminded me of Gabriel García Márquez began shouting at an one of the employees from the actual line.