Open AccessEntre milagros, prodigios, maravillas, portentos y favores: san Pedro Nolasco y el certamen poético mexicano de 1633
Author(s) -
Jessica C. Locke
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
(an)ecdótica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2683-166X
pISSN - 2683-1635
DOI - 10.19130/iifl.anec.2019.2.4770
Subject(s) - contest , greatness , poetry , honor , order (exchange) , humanities , wonder , miracle , art , philosophy , literature , classics , history , theology , computer science , epistemology , finance , economics , operating system
In this article, we study the notions of milagro, prodigio, maravilla, portento and favor (miracle, wonder, marvel, portent in its positive sense, and favor) in accordance with the use of these terms in the manuscript that contains the 1633 Mexican poetry contest in honor of St. Peter Nolasco. We study their use in the first seven competitions within the contest, as well as in the call for participants for the competitions and in the introductory and complementary texts written by friar Juan de Alavés, the secretary of the contest, and we relate the events that are poeticized in the competitions with their corresponding hagiographical and/or historical circumstances. We also include examples of the contest’s winning poetry and of the prose texts from the manuscript in which the five above-mentioned terms are included, in order to show how these terms serve to underscore the messages that are implicit throughout the manuscript, regarding Nolasco’s greatness, his enjoyment of divine grace, and the merits that had made him worthy of having been canonized, which had been achieved in 1628. This article represents a by-product of the project that consisted of editing, studying, analyzing and doing research on the contest in order to prepare the critical edition of the manuscript.