¿Qué me ha de aprovechar ver la pintura d'aquel que con las alas derretidas, cayendo, fama y nombre al mar ha dado?: Liminality in the Sonnets of Garcilaso de la Vega

摘要

Engaging with Victor Turner's concept of ‘liminality’, this study suggests that Garcilaso de la Vega employs the imagery of physicality and quasi-physicality throughout his poetic corpus in order to ensure that the poetic subject only ever experiences partial absence and/or partial presence, either by making absent his beloved Lady's presence, through physically vacillating in space between origin and destination (physicality), or by making present her absence, through control of the senses, memory and imagination (quasi-physicality). In this way, both absence and presence are held continually at arm's length, each becoming a possibility that is never realized in the space of the sonnet. As a result, the poetic subject resides deliberately in a grey space of liminality (whose coordinates are the space of the poetic text) on the boundary between absence and presence. Through close analysis of thirteen sonnets, it becomes apparent that such deliberateness is based on an awareness on Garcilaso's part that whilst the liminal position involves risk, it also involves opportunities, such as encouraging the speculation of the poetic subject's self and the awarding of a poetic voice that otherwise might not be heard.