SOURCE: Amann, Elizabeth M. “Orientalism and Transvestism: Góngora's ‘Discurso contra las navegaciones’ (Soledad primera.)” Cáliope 3, no. 1 (1997): 18-34.

In the following essay, Amann argues that many recent critics have misinterpreted the “Discurso contra las navegaciones,” erroneously claiming that Góngora was an enemy of Spanish exploration and imperialism.

A glance at recent Gongorine scholarship reveals an increasing tendency to foreground the author's manipulation and subversion of traditional gender roles. In a psychoanalytic study attempting to identify a rebellion by the poet against incest prohibition, for example, Malcolm Read spotlights many instances—such as the feminization of Acis (Polifemo, vv. 275-279)—where conventional boundaries between male and female are transgressed or confused. Perhaps most notably, Paul Julian Smith has demonstrated a parallelism between Góngora's conflation of the genres of the epic and lyric, and his defiance of prevailing demarcations between genders. Such interpretations have done much toward...