Dying Well: Wisdom from Medieval Spain

“Our lives are fated as the rivers / That gather downward to the sea / We know as death,” writes the fifteenth-century Spanish poet Jorge Manrique in his celebrated elegy Stanzas on the Death of His Father. In this moving poem, Manrique immortalizes his father Rodrigo and presents an extended allegory for the universal human journey toward death and salvation.

Is this allegory merely a way to acknowledge the inevitability of death? How does allegory shape—and perhaps transform—readers’ understanding of reality as we accompany Don Rodrigo on this journey toward death? What does it mean to “die well”?

And what role does fame play in Manrique’s vision of the good life? Is it in tension with his instruction to the reader about how to die well?

This seminar will examine the medieval understanding of allegory as employed by Manrique. Together, we will seek to uncover the relationship between a noble life, death, and the power of the literary imagination.

Attendees should read through the poem in advance. A text and translation of the poem can be found here.

Dinner will be provided to all attendees.

Eligibility

This event is open to undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates.

About the speaker

Katerina Levinson is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures (ILAC) at Stanford. Her doctoral research elucidates early modern feminism through a historical, philosophical, and textual framework. Through analysis of the iconographic association of women with Mary's warrior prowess in the conquest of evil, her thesis argues that Calderón complicates notions of gendered virtue by applying virtues to women that were traditionally understood to be reserved for men. Her current research investigates the promotion of female authority in colonial drama and poetry. Drawing on the intersection of religion, visual art, and literature, she examines how Marian narratives in the Americas functioned as a vehicle for elevating women within the colonial sphere, revealing the ways in which devotional discourse became a site of female agency and cultural negotiation. Her primary research interests lie in early modern Hispanic drama and poetry, Mariology, moral philosophy and literature, women and gender, and early modern sensory perception.