Lecture by Luis Castellvi on El rapto de San Ignacio- Jan 19th

“This paper will address the epic poem San Ignacio (Madrid, 1666) by the Jesuit Hernando Domínguez Camargo (Viceroyalty of Peru, 1606-1659), paying particular attention to the depiction of the saint’s rapture at Manresa (book II, canto V). This passage shows how the poetic description of an ecstatic vision is a subgenre of ekphrasis, based on the assumption that the imagination of the poet may go beyond the testimony of the mystic. The paper will look at how Camargo reads and responds to his two main models – religious epics (Belmonte Bermúdez, Escobar y Mendoza, Oña) and Góngora – blending them into something new. I will focus on ekphrasis in order to argue that we should complement this reading/re-writing process with seeing/looking at visual art portraying religious ecstasy. A final reflection will be devoted to how readers might respond to Camargo’s mixture of orthodox doctrinal content and an aestheticized sense of the world.”