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Thesis ID: CBB217696360

Pedro Mexía and the Dialogics of Curiosity (2018)

Fritz, Robert (Author)
Wagschal, Steven (Advisor)

Indiana University
Wagschal, Steven

URI: https://search.proquest.com/docview/2013340790?accountid=12964

Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 263 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

My dissertation, "Pedro Mexía and the Dialogics of Curiosity," analyzes the works of 16th-century author Pedro Mexía through the lens of Bakhtinian dialogism to argue that Mexía transformed the notion of curiosity into a discursive tool for redefining Spanish readers' relationships with nature, knowledge, and literature. Mexía authored some of the most popular and widely-read works of the era, including a miscellany titled Silva de varia lección (1540) and a collection of dialogs titled Diálogos o coloquios (1547). I argue that, though largely neglected by modern day scholarship, these works had a profound impact on reading and writing practices in early modern Spain. Mexía's emphasis on curious inquiry into the preternatural, a protean ontological category that encompassed a gamut of unexplained natural phenomena, set him apart from moralists who condemned curiosity as a sinful desire to pry into the secrets of nature. In Mexía's Silva and Diálogos, curiosity denotes an inquisitive engagement with the world and objects of study considered to be wonders, that is, preternatural phenomena that stimulate a desire to better understand the hidden operations of nature. I analyze the ways Mexía teaches readers to practice curious inquiry through what I term "preternatural hermeneutics," an interpretive reading method in which a system of preternatural causal principles serves as an etiological paradigm for interpreting narrative representations of natural wonders. Through an analysis of Mexía's source material, I show how this reading method established dialogic relationships between Spanish vernacular literature and modes of perceiving nature found in medieval and early modern protoscientific genres that contributed to the development of experimental science. Mexía's preternatural hermeneutics thereby introduced his readers to a vision of nature in which the insensible forces behind wondrous phenomena were ultimately intelligible. With evidence from Mateo Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599 and 1604), I argue that by popularizing this protoscientific outlook, Mexía cultivated a readership receptive to the works of subsequent authors like Alemán who would dialogically engage reader curiosity through naturalized representations of human beings' interactions with one another and their environment.

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