A Poetry of Things

A Poetry of Things considers how cultural objects were used by poets in the years around 1600 – a time of social and economic crisis, but also of remarkable artistic and literary production.

Mary E. Barnard is an associate professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University.

"In this new book, Mary E. Barnard makes a strong case for how four poets of the Spanish baroque – Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Juan de Arguijo, and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza – drew ineluctably from the culture of display and the sheer profusion of secular and religious paintings, sculptures, and other luxury objects that art historians have identified with the reign of Philip III. Throughout the book, Barnard invites us to pause and look closely at the objects and material metaphors inscribed in the texts she studies, crafting a compelling argument rendered in often arrestingly beautiful prose."

Emilie L. Bergmann, Professor of Spanish Emerita, University of California, Berkeley:

"Drawing on an intimate knowledge of early modern poetry and the visual arts, Barnard reveals the networks that connect word and image in the Spanish Baroque. With clarity and precision, she illuminates the staggering range of Classical and Renaissance cultural artifacts in of dialogue with selected works by two well-known poets connected with the court: Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo, and two who deserve more attention: the Sevillian Juan de Arguijo and Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, a mystical Catholic poet in England. Barnard's discussion of Arguijo's mythological decoration for his academia's meeting room is a tour de force of ekphrastic analysis. Against a historical background of poems, paintings, sculpture, architecture, Barnard engages concepts of time, interiority and exteriority, voice and body, nature and art, violence, religious devotion, and eroticism. More than recreating the ideal seventeenth-century readers’ imaginative background for reading these poems, Barnard redefines the concept of material culture for early modern studies."