Please join us for a joint event with the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures on Tuesday, May 21st, at 5pm. We are pleased to welcome Maxim Rigaux, Fulbright and Belgian American Educational Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, who is presenting part of his current research: “Black Mirror in Golden Age Spain: Juan Latino, Diego Velázquez, and the Poetics of Self.”

In this talk, Rigaux will highlight how Juan Latino (ca. 1518-ca. 1595), a former black slave of the illustrious Fernández de Córdoba family, creates a highly complex literary persona through the two volumes of Latin poetry he published in the 1570s in Granada. He will pay special attention to Latino’s staging of a mirror effect in the Austrias Carmen, a two-book epic on the Christian victory in the battle of Lepanto. This technique enables the poet to place his patron Pedro de Deza at the center of attention alongside his own authorial figure. In this analysis, Rigaux will compare Latino’s textual strategies to Diego Velázquez’s use of the mirror in Las Meninas.  

Service:
“Black Mirror in Golden Age Spain: Juan Latino, Diego Velázquez, and the Poetics of Self,” by Maxim Rigaux
Wednesday, May 21st, 5pm
Wieboldt 408
Light refreshments will be served.