Dissertation

The angel or the beast: Will and wisdom in Spanish Renaissance literature

Bradburn-Ruster, Michael

1995

Overview

This work traces and elucidates the idea of free will as a crucial element in Renaissance and Baroque thought and literature, focussing specifically on the works of three Siglo de Oro authors: St. Teresa of Avila's Libro de la vida, Francisco de Quevedo's Heraclito cristiano, and Pedro Calderon de la Barca's plays La vida es sueno and El magico prodigioso. The relationship between the psychological faculties of intellect, will and appetite is shown to lie at the core of the period's representation of human dignity: every human person is born rational and free, allowing alignment with the image of the angel or of the beast, as Pico and many other thinkers expressed the privilege and burden of humanity. Human wisdom, it is argued, often continued to be viewed in an Augustinian sense, not as rational knowledge alone, but as the confluence and integration of intellect and will, thought and love, imaged as coinciding in the heart as the source of the vital enactment of knowledge. Disjunction or fragmentation of knowledge and love, masculine and feminine, nature and grace, individual and society, are presented as fatal to the achievement of wisdom. The three writers are explored in the context of Spanish Medieval and Renaissance intellectual history, including mysticism, astrology, magic and theological concerns that arise during the Reformation, particularly with regard to Protestant denials of free will. Moreover, their thought is viewed in the light of the Perennial Philosophy, allowing for an exploration of the many parallels in Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist sapiential traditions, as expressed by Coomaraswamy, Nasr, Schuon and Murata. Many analogues are also explored in terms of Jungian psychology. Such traditional views of the will, acknowledging both human power and limitation, are echoed in aspects of modern philosophy and psychology, in particular the Existentialism of Buber and Marcel, and the approach of Assagioli, while standing in direct opposition to the Will to Power that underlies much modern culture. Thus the Siglo de Oro writers, in polyphonic relation with other spiritual traditions, are viewed as posing vital questions for the prevailing culture of consumerism and technological power.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Literature / Modern literature / Philosophy / Romance literature / Theology
• ISBN: 9798208350546