Description:
The first monographic devoted to the Milagros since 1965 (Gariano), Historias de certidumbre is a fresh approach to an old book. A rhetorical study of Berceo’s discourse leads to a new way of conceiving protagonism in th・Milagros and of distinguishing between propaganda of a local church or monastery, and the propagation of a faith or an ideology. Diz shows how a poet, thrust into human history, actualizes the paradigm of Fall and Redemption of sacred history that supports the conception of the work. For the first time, prayers and Mary’s epiphanies are identified as two conventional scenes, where the imperative is the shared verbal mode that represents the Christian paradigm of history. Also for the first time, Diz identifies ordeal as a shared motif, which, in turn, may be thought of as one of the underlying patterns in all of Berceo’s narratives.

Language, feminism, rhetoric, patristic exegesis, structural patterns, are references from which Diz studies the relation between the representation of women and of the Virgin Mary, to deny the improvement in the status of women allegedly produced by the Marian cult. Her reading, instead, proposes that in Berceo, the Virgin Mary becomes identified with the Church. Penetrated by the Word, and also a vehicle for the embodiment of the Word, Mary is endowed with a power that is also the power of the oratores. Although the association Mary - Church is by no means new in medieval theological and religious writings, it has never been proposed as pertinent to the significance of Berceo’s Milagros. In the prominence of mediation, as in many other areas, Diz finds homologies of thinking patterns between Berceo’s text and the intellectual makeup of his times.


INDICE:

Agradecimientos......VII

Introduccion......1

Capitulo 1. Historia de certidumbre......9

Capitulo 2. La infancia permanente......46

Capitulo 3. El discurso eficaz......78

Capitulo 4. La buena y la mala fe......108

Capitulo 5. Las mujeres y el culto mariano......162

Capitulo 6. La patria mariana......189

Bibliografia......242

Indice analitico......264