Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Aspectos de la temporalidad en la poesia de Quevedo
Abstract
Among all Baroque Spanish writers, Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas stands out as the literary figure that expressed with the greatest intensity of feelings and profundity of thought the drama of the transitoriness of human existence, considered as a living death from the cradle to the grave, and the longing for the spiritual liberation of the soul in the realm of eternity. Quevedo's anguish is the result both of his intellectual background and the critical historical period of the decadence of Spain during which he lived. This study, beginning with a survey of the philosophical development of the concept of time from the Presocratics to Francisco Suárez (1580–1617), outlines the problem of time in the Baroque age and, finally, presents Quevedo's biography and studies in order to understand better his cast of mind. Then it proceeds to analyze different kinds of temporal metaphors and images in a few moral, lyrical, satyrical and burlesque poems. In our analysis we use several hermeneutical tools, such as the Scripture, the classics, the Fathers of the Church, philosophical and religious writings, Quevedo's own prose works, iconography, music and dance. The last chapter of this dissertation deals with the theme of the temps vécu in four metaphysical sonnets. Particularly in one of them, entitled “Represéntase la brevedad de lo que se vive y cuán nada parece lo que se vivió”, we relate the tension between being and existence to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and attempt to prove that Quevedo's poetic expression of this conflict is rooted in this latter thinker, whom he held to be a doctrinal authority, and cannot be equated to the postures of modern existentialism.
Subject Area
Romance literature|Modern language|Biographies|Language
Recommended Citation
Tarelli, Francesco, "Aspectos de la temporalidad en la poesia de Quevedo" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9917864.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9917864