The TheaTer of TruTh The Theater of Truth the ideology of (neo)baroque aesthetics William Egginton stanford university press Stanford, California 2010 Stanford university Press Stanford, California ©2010 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior university all rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford university Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data egginton, William. The theater of truth : the ideology of (neo)baroque aesthetics / William egginton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-6954-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Spanish literature—Classical period, 1500–1700— history and criticism. 2. Baroque literature—history and criticism. 3. Spanish american literature—20th century— history and criticism. 4. Truth (aesthetics). 5. aesthetics, Modern. I. Title. pq6066.e39      2010 860.9'1—dc22  2009022164 Printed in the united States of america on acid-free, archival-quality paper Typeset at Stanford university Press in 10/13.5 Galliard For Sebastian Acknowledgments This book was made possible by a leave generously granted by the univer- sity at Buffalo and its Department of romance Languages and Literatures, for which I thank Maureen Jameson, uday Sakahtme, Charles Stinger, and Martha Malamud in particular, and by the Johns hopkins university, for which I thank deans adam falk, David Bell, and Gregory Ball. Thanks are further due to my editors at Stanford university Press, especially Norris Pope, emily-Jane Cohen, Sarah Crane Newman, and John feneron; to Julio Baena and Marina Brownlee for making the book better; to Ludwig Nagl and the Institut für Philosophie at the university of Vienna and to elisabeth Bronfen and Christian Kiening at the university of Zürich for the invitation to present some of the ideas developed here to a broader audi- ence; to Cristina Moreiras for the invitation to present an earlier version of chapter two at the colloquium she organized at the university of Michigan in 2005; to Christian and eva of Café Phil in Vienna for the perversely ethi- cal book presentation and the office away from home; to Gregg Lambert for the consistently enriching exchange of ideas; to Kevin heller for edit- ing and advice, and to replace thanks elsewhere neglected; to David Cas- tillo, for eternal collaboration and friendship, as well as for the invitation to write for his and Massimo Lollini’s issue of Hispanic Issues; to Nicholas Spadaccini and Luis Martín-estudillo, for their kind invitation to take part in the Hispanic Issues Baroque/Neobaroque symposium at the university of Minnesota, and to the rest of the participants of that conference for the ex- cellent exchange of ideas; to Joachim Küpper for the invitation to present chapter five at the freie universität in Berlin, and to Meg Greer for bring- viii Acknowledgments ing me to Duke university to present chapter four; to Sepp Gumbrecht for continuing to be the best of friends as well as teachers; to robert harrison for surviving and being an inspiration for me and so many others; to David e. Johnson and Lisa Block de Behar, for making me think about Borges even more; to Galen Brokaw, for unwavering support and for broaden- ing my horizons; to Bob Davidson, for always opening up new horizons for thought and conversation; to eduardo González for inspiring conver- sations; to Stephen Nichols for his leadership and keen intellect; and to all my colleagues at the Department of German and romance Languages and Literatures at the Johns hopkins university, for their welcome and for providing me a new intellectual home. I would also like to pay special regard to my graduate students at the university at Buffalo, at Cornell, and at Johns hopkins, who have been consistent sounding boards for the ideas and arguments I present here. If it is a truism that one never works in a vacuum, it is doubly true in my case, where even in the seclusion of my home and office my thoughts are continually inflected and infected by the extraordinary world of knowledge my wife, media theorist and filmmaker Bernadette Wegenstein, brings in and radiates out. her presence ensures that, no matter how distant the time period I am considering, I never let go of its relevance to the present. earlier versions of chapters one and two were published respectively as “of Baroque holes and Baroque folds,” in Hispanic Baroques: Read- ing Cultures in Context, ed. Nicholas Spadaccini and Luis Martín-estudi- llo, Hispanic Issues 31 (2005): 55–71, and “The Baroque house of reason (Cervantes, Master architect),” in Reason and its Others, ed. David Castillo and Massimo Lollini, Hispanic Issues 32 (2006): 186–203. a translation of the latter into Spanish by Virginia Gutierrez appeared in Insula (2006). an earlier version of chapter five has appeared as “The Corporeal Image and the New World Baroque,” in Latin America, in Theory, ed. David e. John- son, South Atlantic Quarterly 106.1 (2007): 107–29, copyright 2007, Duke university Press, and is reprinted by permission of the publisher. a shorter version of the introduction was published as “The Baroque as a Problem of Thought,” PMLA 124.1 (2009): 143–49, and is reprinted here by permis- sion of the copyright owner, The Modern Language Association of America. I am grateful to these publications for permission to use this material. Contents     Introduction: The Baroque as a Problem of Thought 1 1. of Baroque holes and Baroque folds 11 2. how to Build a Baroque house (Cervantes, Master architect) 26 3. The Theater of Truth 39 4. The opacity of Language and the Transparency of Being: on Góngora’s Poetics 56 5. The Corporeal Image and the New World Baroque 69 6. The Dream Life of Calderón and Borges 85   7. The World Well Dressed: The Later Cinema of Pedro almodóvar 107     epilogue: a New Distinction 127 Notes 131 Works Cited 149 Index 163