La construccion de la imagen literaria de Carlos V en sus cronicas castellanas.

Item

Title
La construccion de la imagen literaria de Carlos V en sus cronicas castellanas.
Identifier
AAI3187800
identifier
3187800
Creator
Saen de Casas, Maria del Carmen.
Contributor
Adviser: Isaias Lerner
Date
2006
Language
Spanish
Publisher
City University of New York.
Subject
Literature, Romance | Literature, Modern | Biography
Abstract
As the title of my dissertation indicates, I have focused on the study of the five histories or chronicles of the life of the Emperor Charles V (1500--1558) that were written in Castilian. Four of the authors attempted to complete their work during the first half of the sixteenth century, while the Emperor was still alive: Pedro Mexia, Alonso de Santa Cruz, Pedro Giron and Lopez de Gomara. None of them succeeded and left us with unfinished works. We have to wait until the reign of Charles' grandson, Phillip III for Fray Prudencio de Sandoval to produce a complete biography of the Castilian king. I have approached these chronicles not as historical documents, but as literary texts in which an ideal monarch is portrayed. By a skillful use of epideictic oratory, the above mentioned historians depict Charles V as an exemplum of moral perfection. In order to legitimate his political figure, they envisioned a perfect king who embodied the Christian virtues defined by the religious-political theory of their time. After an introduction in which I define the historical, political and ideological context in which these works were written, I study each narrative in a separate chapter, underlying the peculiarities of the image of the Emperor the author is trying to convey. In a final chapter, I compare the total image created by each historian, to detect the common thematic characteristics shared by all of them and to differentiate those features that vary depending on the ideology, interests, purpose and background of the author.
Type
dissertation
Source
PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
degree
Ph.D.