Texts and (Con)texts: the Socio-Cultural Spaces of Quevedo's ‘Miré los muros de la patria mía'. Some Comments on Possible Ways of Teaching Golden Age Spanish Poetry.

This paper was presented at the Golden Age Literature Session 1. American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. San Francisco. 5-9 July, 2001. It was accepted as a model for ways of teaching Miré los muros by the Advance Placement Board and a version of it is published online by the Advanced Placement College Board (New York, 2002).

Introduction and Declaration:

This is not an academic paper on manners in which to interpret Quevedo’s Miré los muros de la patria mía; rather it is a collection of a variety of ways and means by which the poem may be introduced to a class of students at various levels of Spanish. Note that I use the word introduce, for I am not certain that poetry can be taught, especially in a crowded classroom to a very different generation of students that reads for pleasure less and less.

In fact, I would ask you, at this point as a teacher, to meditate briefly upon the meanings of poetry and teaching, for the socio-cultural spaces that surround Quevedo’s poem extend beyond the writing and reception of Quevedo’s text in seventeenth century Spain to include its reception in the 21st Century: that is to say, in your classroom.

This gives an added importance to the exact relationship between you and your students, your way of communicating with them, and their own manner of allowing themselves to be communicated with. There are, as all good teachers know, some compromises to be made in each individual classroom situation. What compromises you make are up to you; for each teacher must approach her own class from her own strengths and her own interests and must involve her own students in her own special way. Thus, I begin by stressing the necessity of offering and finding meaning within your own individual social context and academic context, that context being the intimacy of your own methods, in your own class room, faced by your own students.

It is also important to realize that we live in a world which, while not exactly denigrating and denying poetry, has placed severe and very different demands upon it. In much of our society, like it or not, the closest things to metaphysical wit in many instances are, for better or for worse, the television advertisement, the rock video, rap music, the catchy headline, a musical jingle, and the political one liner, destined to put down an unfortunate rival.

The question I place before you now is: how do we make poetry, any poetry, let alone classical Spanish poetry of the seventeenth century, rise off the page and live for the students in our classes? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to resuscitate classical poetry within the four walls in which you and your students share a socio-cultural space.

How can you, in your classroom, in the front line of the educational trenches, bring this poem Miré los muros de la patria mía back to life and to make it meaningful for your students? How you do this depends upon many factors:

• you
• your personality
• your relationship with your students
• the level of your students
• the personalities and work rate of your students

Above all, how you confront your class, on a daily basis, is an independent decision, taken by you, perhaps in consultation with your chair, with your colleagues, with your students, perhaps taken on your own. What I offer are some ideas that have worked for me at different times and in different circumstances, sometimes with this particular poem, sometimes when introducing other forms of poetry. Hopefully, some of this may also work for you.

Commitment to Poetry

If you are not committed to poetry, it can be difficult to present poetry in a positive way. I have for some time now begun all my public appearances by reading a poem. I choose a different poem each time, one that in my opinion suits the circumstances and provides an insight on my current way of thinking. If I know the specific audience which I am addressing, I will choose a poem that is suited both to that audience and to the specific occasion. I do this for several reasons:

• to express my confidence and delight in poetry
• to show that poetry plays an important role in my daily life
• to draw attention to the sound and structure of words
• to present imagery and insight as necessary parts of our world
• to go beyond linear thinking
• to make an audience receptive to the enriched nuances of words
• to draw an audience’s attention to the intimate relationship between reader and audience, poet and listener

Following this tradition, I will now invite you to read a poem about, amongst other things, the relationship between teacher and taught. This poem is available online, on my webpage. It has also been published in my third poetry collection entitled Sun and Moon: Poems from Oaxaca, Mexico.

Pedro Salinas once wrote that “La poesía se explica sola, si no, no se explica.” With this poem that I now present, I am demonstrating my commitment to poetry and my questioning of a certain style of authoritative, punitive teaching. I will say no more.

Inquisitor

He told me to read,
and plucked my left eye from its orbit;
he slashed the glowing globe of the other.
Knowledge leaked out: loose threads dangling,
the reverse side of a tapestry.

He told me to speak,
and squeezed dry dust between my teeth.
I spouted a diet of Catechism and Confession.

He emptied my mind of poetry and history.
He destroyed the myths of my people.
He filled me with fantasies from a far off land.
I live in a desert where people die of thirst,
yet he talked to me of a man walking on water.

On all sides, as stubborn as stucco,
the prison walls listened, and learned.

I counted the years with feeble scratches:
one, four, two, three;
for an hour, each day, the sun shone on my face;
for an hour, at night, the moon kept me company.
Broken worlds lay shattered inside me.
Dust gathered in my people’s ancient dictionary.

My heart was a weathered stone
withering within my chest.
It longed for the witch doctor’s magic,
for the healing slash of wind and rain.

The Inquisitor told me to write down our history:
I wrote how his church had come to save us.


THE CREATIVE CLASSROOM

Listening:

We sometimes forget that poetry is often written to be read aloud and listened to. We should bear this in mind when presenting Miré los muros de la patria mía. So: record the poem in Spanish; play it to your students. Get colleagues to record the poem. Play different recordings in class. Give the students different voices, different pronunciations, different reading rhythms. Let the students talk (in English or Spanish) about poetry as sound. Do any of your students play musical instruments? Ask them to try putting Miré los muros de la patria mía to rhythm and music.

Speaking:

Ask students to ask questions about the sound of the poem, the meaning of words that are heard, but not yet seen. What ideas / images / metaphors do the sounds trigger? Ask students to repeat what they have heard, or think that they have heard. Let them summarize what they have heard, let them summarize what they have “seen” in the images and metaphors of the poem. Let them, from sound only, create their own poems, their own metaphors, in English or Spanish, depending on the level and the language in which you are teaching.

Reading:

Circulate the written text of Miré los muros de la patria mía. Ask students to read the poem to each other; demonstrate your own understanding of the poem’s rhythms and its natural speech breaks; use phonetic symbols for aids to pronunciation; use standard markings for those natural rhythms and breaks in the poetry, also use ascending lines and descending lines at the places where the speaker’s voice should rise and fall; ask students to record readings; play back the recordings and assist with rhythm and pronunciation; organize a poetry reading for this and other poems by Quevedo and other early modern Spanish writers. Stress breathing: and take a break during the class to enable your self and your students to stretch and breathe. If your institution supports a School of Drama, ask one of the drama instructors to visit your class and to demonstrate breathing, reading, and relaxation techniques. The breathing - moving - speaking session is often an incredible learning experience for students who watch television without necessarily understanding the effort that goes into acting as a discipline; and remember, acting and performance represent the active use of living words.

Writing:

Ask your students to write prose renditions of what they have now read and heard. Ask your students to generate their own poems in English or Spanish.

One Method:

Have the class choose twelve meaningful words from Miré los muros de la patria mía. From this list, ask each individual to choose a minimum of 6 words and a maximum of 10 to generate new poetry in Spanish or English. Now ask your students to write a new poem. Encourage the creation of short poems with metaphors or story lines. These can be personal or fictitious. No rhyme should be required at this stage, though you may be surprised at the number of people who rhyme actively and creatively from pure intuition and feel for language. At this initial moment, no shape should be requested other than the natural form of metaphor and personal idiosyncracy.

Other methods:

Other methods abound in the many works about teaching creative writing. Here’s another one: select single words, lines, images, metaphors, units of meaning from Miré los muros de la patria mía and generate creativity from these mini texts. Use established techniques of mind mapping and spider webbing for the creation of associative fields and additional imagery. Speaking specifically of Miré los muros de la patria mía, remember that walls / muros and fatherland / patria will have different cultural meanings according to the immediate backgrounds of your students. And remember, too, that the associative fields surrounding the seemingly simple word wall are very different for the generation that has witnessed the tumbling, brick by concrete slab, of the Berlin Wall or seen Pink Floyd’s video of The Wall, to mention only two major modern influences. Remember too, that Pink Floyd gave a classic performance of The Wall right by the Berlin Wall. The Wall, then, and tearing down the wall, may have radically different meanings for our students than it does for us; it is, in my opinion, one of our duties to be conscious of these alternative cultures, especially when they impact directly on the members of our class.

Creativity:

Ask your students to design a poster based on their understanding of Miré los muros de la patria mía. Hold a poster competition. If your classroom is technologically enhanced, invite your students to design a cd rom cover; ask them to design a 30 second tv or radio commercial featuring a live performance of Miré los muros de la patria mía in a rock concert featuring an upcoming Quevedo poetry recital.

The Poem Itself

Exegesis:

I will not go deeply into an explanation of the possible meanings of Miré los muros de la patria mía. The end bibliography on Miré los muros de la patria mía lists approximately 30 articles, many of which offer detailed commentaries on different aspects of the text. After a selection of these articles has been consulted, a line by line examination of grammar and vocabulary will be easy enough to prepare. The exegesis should look for the exact meaning of the poem at those points where it is possible to locate it. Areas that present difficulties should be explained, alternative interpretations offered, and words noted that have multiple meanings and extended thematic associations. Clearly, muros and patria fall into this category as there is a long tradition of debate about the specific meanings and symbolism of each term.

Construction of the sonnet

The actual construction of a sonnet is fascinating in itself. If the students are advanced enough, exercises in poetic creativity might include the in-class writing of a sonnet. The need to find rhyme words, the differences between the quatrains and the tercets, the creation, if you want one, of the lapidary rhyming couplet, all lead the student to a better appreciation of what poetry is, how it is constructed, and the effort that other people have put into their own creative endeavors. Aspects of sonnet creation that might be examined include:

• Quatrains
• Tercets
• The traditional break at line 9
• Quevedo’s use of breaks in lines 12, 13, or even 14
• Varying rhyme schemes

(1) ABBA ABBA CDC CDC
(2) ABBA ABBA CDE CDE
(3) ABBA ABBA CC DEED
(4) ABBA ABBA ABBA CC

The placing of the rhyming couplet in the English sonnet form is of particular interest and students should be allowed to experiment creatively with their own sonnet forms. Some creative teachers believe strongly that it is only after students have tried to write sonnets for themselves, that a true understanding of the nature of the form can be gained.

Texts and (Con)Texts:

The starting point here is that there were two very different contexts for Miré los muros de la patria mía that produced two very different socio-cultural (con)texts. The first represents Miré los muros de la patria mía as a single poem that stands on its own. It occurs alone in anthologies or can be found as an isolated poem in the muse Polimnia, Parnaso español, 1648.

In this context, the poem takes on political and social overtones and the socio-political relationship between poet and country can be emphasized. This poem, with its subtle changes in text, can be shown to differ in function from the same poem when it is read in the context of a psalm, number 17 in Blecua’s critical edition of Quevedo’s poetry, in a variable sequence of up to 28 religious poems of a penitential nature, dedicated to Quevedo’s aunt, and bearing the title of the Heráclito cristiano, with the date 23 April 1613.

A study of Miré los muros de la patria mía in this second context should attempt to study Quevedo’s sonnet as part of a longer sonnet sequence. This will allow the instructor to embark upon very different areas of study:

• the biographical context of the crisis of 1613
• the themes of the Heráclito cristiano
• the nature of the poem cycle entitled the Heráclito cristiano
• variations in Miré los muros de la patria mía in the different versions of the Heráclito
• the question of editorial and authorial authority (who chooses which text and how and why)
• the influence of the Jesuits upon Quevedo
• the Ignatian Holy Week Retreats and Meditation Exercises

Questions to be considered include: why did González de Salas split up the Heráclito cristiano when he first published Quevedo's poems in the Parnaso español of 1648? Was the splitting done with or without Quevedo’s knowledge and consent? What differences do the biographical, socio-contexts make to our understanding of the poem? What differences does it make to read Miré los muros de la patria mía in and out of this religious context? What happens we read the poem as a political statement?

The poem in various contexts (continued):

1. Semana Santa o Lamentaciones de F de Q V a la Muerte de Nuestro Señor Jesuchristo 8 poems from above closely associated with Miré in 4117

2. Lágrimas de un penitente (Tres Musas)

3. Heráclito cristiano
The four versions of the Heráclito cristiano

4. The poem out of context / Parnasso of 1648 and various anthologies.

Textual Variations and Manuscript Variants:

Quite simply, some of the translation differences cannot be attributed to “bad” translations; on the other hand, if one has a knowledge of the manuscript tradition, variations in translation can also be attributedto the translating of different texts with more or less flawed variants.

From this we can establish that (a) a poet works with many texts, not just one; and (b) that these texts may be ordered chronologically and studied for changes and revision patterns.
This leads us to study the seven versions of the poems, changes between each version, the theory of poetic intensification (put forward so eloquently by J. M. Blecua), and poetic variations which offer a change from the generic (la muerte / death) to the specific (mi muerte / my death) in the sonnet's final line.

Biographical approach:

Who was Quevedo? What was the crisis of 1613? Can we relate the crisis of 1613 to Ignatian Meditation exercises and the creation of a sequence of religious poetry? Is it possible for us to explain the radical differences in Quevedo’s writing: the religious treatises, the love poetry, the picaresque novel, the scurrilous sonnets, letrillas, and romances?

Can we differentiate clearly between the three stages at which Miré los muros de la patria mía was revised? Can we account for Quevedo's seeming obsession with the writing and (re)vision of this poem?

Translation Theory:

This is how I would like to present Miré los muros de la patria mía if I were running a translation class. First I would ask the students to locate and read 3 translations of the poem in English. Then I would set the questions: (1) what do these three poems have in common? (2) Can you perceive any significant patterns?

Translation 1 (Robert Lowell):

I saw the musty shingles of my house,
raw wood and fixed once, now a wash of moss
eroded by the ruins of the age
turning all fair and green things into waste.
I climbed the pasture. I saw the dim sun drink
the ice just thawing from the bouldered fallow,
woods crowd the foothills, seize last summer’s field,
and higher up, the sickly cattle bellow.
I went into my house. I saw how dust
and ravel had devoured its furnishing;
even my cane was withered and more bent,
even my sword was coffined up in rust –
there was no hilt left for the hand to try.
Everything ached, and told me I must die.

Translation 2 (Roger Moore):

I looked at the defenses of my native land:
empty silos, bombs and rockets melted down.
“Put your faith,” the TV said, “in diplomacy,
not in the metal walls of flying ships.” I went

outside. Cattle were lowing against the falling
temperature, tails to the wind. Steam
rose from their flanks, then was scattered
like an overnight dream of ghosts. Inside,

on the sink, a shrivelled tea bag, dried up stains;
my trusty coffee pot, rusty on the stove,
was chipped and raw at the rim. I took my

hunting rifle in my hand. Its crooked barrel
served me as a walking-stick. As I limped
around, my mother’s photo spoke to me of death.

Translation 3 (Roger Moore):

I’ve got something to say, so here’s what I’ll do
I’ll write it out in rap with a rhythm just for you.
I once saw a town with a very small wall
that’s so fallen down it’s no wall at all.
It’s old and it’s rotten and it cannot last
like a runner on the track who’s run too fast
at the start of the race, and he’s run out of breath,
so he’s hit that wall, and he feels like death.
And there’s cattle lowing and the sun’s in the sky
but it’s winter time, so the sun’s not high,
and the shadows are long, and the wind’s getting cold,
and it’s all about a man who’s growing old.
He looks around his house and all he sees
are dead people’s faces and living memories.
He’s trapped on the ground floor, can’t climb stairs,
everything he touches he’ll leave to his heirs.
There’s a pain in his side, and he can’t catch his breath,
and all that he sees, reminds him of death!

I would then ask the students to assume that all three of the above poems are “free translations” from a common original. Then I would ask them to answer the following questions --

(A) Can you reconstruct the narrative line of the original poem from these creative translations?

(B) What words, thoughts, images or metaphors are common to all three creative translations?

(C) Can you reconstruct the structure of the original poem from these creative translations?

Mission Impossible: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reconstruct what the original poem probably looked like!

Do this in English, French, or Spanish. If you recognize the author and the original poem, please do not set out the original, word for word, but try a reconstruction from the evidence I have given you!

I would then ask the students to track down some more translations, this time in rhyme. Here are 2:

Translation 4 (David Gitlitz, from Songs of Life and Death and In Between)

I saw the ramparts of my native land
that once were strong now crumbled all away,
exhausted from the headlong rush of day,
their valor weakened, unable to stand.

Out in he countryside, I saw the sun
drink up the rivulets from ice untied,
and cattle angry at the mountainside
for daylight with dark shadows overrun.

I went inside my house, and found it stained
with age and crumbling with decrepitude;
my staff more bent and weaker with each breath.

I felt my ancient sword of all strength drained,
and not one thing I found of all I viewed
reminded me of anything but death.

Translation 5: (Griswald Morley and Charles Cobb Revising the version of John Masefield – quoted by Gareth Walters)

I viewed the walls of my ancestral land,
If one time strong, now crumbling in decay,
And weary with time’s course that slips away,
Their valor such a force cannot withstand.

I walked the fields, and saw the sun at hand
Was drinking up the streamlets thawed today;
And, being robbed of their clear light of day,
The flocks the wooded hill did reprimand.

I went inside, and saw my house become
Old dwelling stained, with rubble overrun;
My walking cane less strong, more prone to bend.

I felt my sword, by age now overcome,
And I found naught to cast my eyes upon
Not grim reminder that does death portend.

Here are the questions I would ask about the rhyming translations.

(A) To what extent are the translators / poets successful in their endeavours?

(B) To what extent do the formal structure and rhyme encourage the poet to stray from the original?

(C) Which one of these three sonnets is closest to the original? Why?

(D) Which one of these three sonnets is, in your subjective opinion, the best poem? Why?

(E) Comment on the new metaphors created by each translator / poet. Is the new idiom as successful as the old? If so, why? If not, why not?

Finally, I would ask the students to check on two prose translations designed to accompany the original text in Spanish.

Translation 6 (J. M. Cohen, Penguin Book of Spanish Verse)

I looked on the walls of my fatherland, so strong once, but now mouldered away, weary with the passage of time, by which their valour is already decaying.
I went out to the fields, and saw the sun drinking up the streams, which were released from the frost, and the cattle complaining to the woods that they stole the daylight with their shadows.
I went into the house, and saw that it was the discoloured ruin of an ancient habitation; that my shepherd’s crook was more bent and less strong.
I felt my sword conquered by the years, and found nothing to look upon that was not a memory of death.

Translation 7 (Elías Rivers, Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain. New York: Dell. 1966. Pp. 264-65.)

I looked at the walls of my native land, if once strong, now dilapidated, tired by the racing of time, which now causes their bravery to fall. I went out into the fields; I saw that the sun was drinking the brooks freed from ice, and the cattle were complaining of he mountain which with shadows was stealing the light of day. I entered my house; I saw that, all stained, it was the remnants of an ancient habitation; my cane, more bent and less strong. I felt my sword to be conquered by age, and I found nothing on which to set my eyes that wasn’t a reminder of death.

Finally, I would present the orginal text and ask the students to translate, basing their own version on one or more of the possibilities outlined in this section. Clearly, these translations might vary (and rightly so) from prose to rhyme to rap!

Miré los muros de la patria mía,
si un tiempo fuertes, ya desmoronados,
de la carrera de la edad cansados,
por quien caduca ya su valentía.

Salíme al campo, vi que el sol bebía
los arroyos del yelo desatados,
y del monte quejosos los ganados,
que con sus sombras hurtó su luz al día.

Entré en mi casa; vi que, amancillada,
de anciana habitación era despojos;
mi báculo más corvo y menos fuerte;

vencida de la edad sentí mi espada.
Y no hallé cosa en que poner los ojos
que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.

Reversibility

Or, of course, you could reverse the whole process and start out with the original poem. Then you would move from the prose translations, to the rhymed translations, and on to the free verse translations with which I began. Quite simply, there is no single way: there are many paths, and all are open to you and to your imagination.

Peripheral Studies

Historical context:

Invite your students to place the poem in its historical context. Topics for possible examination include:

• Renaissance and Reformation
• Seventeenth Century Europe
• Seventeenth Century Spain
• The post Armada period
• An Empire diminished
• The reigns of Phillip III and Phillip IV
• The centralization of government and the loss of personal power and control
• The role of the favorite in political circles
• Quevedo as participant in world events
• Quevedo as an outsider / an insider
• Quevedo as objective / subjective observer

Literary history:

The literary and cultural history of early modern Spain is equally fascinating and the visual arts can be shown to create a parallel visual world to the creative literary arts. Topics for examination can include:

• The advent of Italianate poetry in Spain
• The change from traditional verse forms
• The introduction of the hendecasyllable into Spanish verse
• The continuance of traditional verse forms
• Continued use of the 8 syllable romance line
• Comparison between the effects of long line and short line in poetry
• A history of the sonnet in Spain (from the Marqués de Santillana’s Sonetos fechos al itálico modo, through Garcilaso and Boscán to Herrera, Lope de Vega, and Góngora, arriving finally at Quevedo
• An extended view of early modern Spanish poetry including poetry from the schools of Sevilla and Salamanca.

Visual Arts

At the same time, a parallel discussion might be begun on how the Renaissance interpretation of the world differs from the Baroque interpretation with regard to the visual arts. There are enormous parallels between the written world and the visual world, parallels which we who teach the written word are not always willing to recognize and introduce. Specific topics might include:

• The nature of perspective
• Classical art and the Renaissance
• Chiaro-oscuro
• A comparison between El Greco and Velásquez
• Telling a story in a visual medium
• From stasis, through movement, to distortion and emotion

The Search for an Imperial Language:

During the early modern period in Spain, there was a series of divergent views on how language should and might develop. This search for a modern language parallels, in many ways, the search that we are currently undergoing with our computerized jargons and the enormous development of English as a potential world language. In early modern Spain, this effort may be summarized in the phrase The Search for an Imperial Language. The development of Spanish during the early modern period is well worth examining. Possible topics include:

• Towards an imperial language?
• Imperial Spanish
• Quevedo versus Góngora
• Conceptismo versus culteranismo or conceptismo and culteraniso?
• The development of Spanish poetic language: Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera, Luis de Góngora, and Francisco de Quevedo

Information Technology:

Search the web for Quevedo pages. Design a Miré web page. Design a Quevedo web page. Hold an online discussion and post the conversation generated by the poem in and out of class. Big decision: should this be group work or individual work? And remember, again for better or for worse, that sometimes the web experience that the students will gain may take them further than the academic knowledge we think we are giving them when we teach the poem in traditional fashion.

An Immediate Conclusion:

Here, for your continued amusement, is a summary, in rap form, of the many different ways in whuich you might introduce Miré los muros....

Listen to the poem, read it out loud,
read it alone, or read it in a crowd.
Read it to yourself, to a friend when you meet,
get your friend to read it and listen to the beat.
Put it to music, beat the rhythm on a drum.
Let the words flow out, let the meanings come.
Trigger word pictures: a jack flash in your brain.
Take a break. Have a stretch. Release that pain.
Breathe deep. Think deep. Let the feelings flow.
Memorize the poem: let the metaphors grow.
Paint a painting: put a poster smack on the walls.
Dance Quevedo rhythms through the high school halls.
Build a chat room, build a real web site,
choose cool colours, make it look right.
Do a poetry recital, write an ad for tv,
Design a cd cover, set your brain cells free.
Try going to the library, try searching on the net:
place the poem in its context and better yet
Look up Golden Age Spain, Reformation, and Armada,
Empire Reconquest, Baroque, and Nada.
Write sonnets and tercets, try rhyming in Quatrains,
Set your mind free: don’t keep it in chains.

Bibliography:

Poem 29 “Miré los muros de la patria mía”

Alonso, Damaso. "El desgarrón afectivo en la poesía de Quevedo." Poesía española: Ensayo de métodos y límites estilísticos. Madrid: Gredos, 5th edn. 1966, 497-580.

Andrews, J. Richard, & Silverman, Joseph H. "A New Anthology of Spanish Poetry." Modern Language Forum 41 (1956): 99-107.

Arenas, José. “Quevedo: Muerte y eternidad.” Etudes de Lettres 2 (1986): 71, 73, 75.

Blecua, J.M. “Sobre un célebre soneto de Quevedo.” Insula 3 (1948): 3. Rpt. in Francisco de Quevedo. Ed. G. Sobejano, 287-90.

Crosby, J.O. ed. Poesía varia. By Francisco de Quevedo. Madrid: Cátedra, 1981. 114-116.

Darst, David H. “Quevedo's ‘Miré los muros de la patria mía.’” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 77 (1976): 334-36.

García Lorca, Francisco. “Dos sonetos y una canción.” Revista Hispánica Moderna 34 (1968): 267-87.

Jauralde Pou, Pablo. "’Miré los muros de la patria mía’ y el Heráclito Cristiano.” Edad de Oro 6 (1987): 165-88.

Maurer, Christopher. “‘Defeated by the Age’: On Ambiguity in Quevedo's ‘Miré los muros de la patria mía.’” Hispanic Review 54.4 (1986): 427-42.

Moore, Roger. "’Obras humanas de el divino Quevedo’: A Reappraisal of Ms. 4117 of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 11.1 (1986): 49-86.

---- “Some Comments on Iterative Thematic Imagery in Quevedo's Heráclito cristiano.” Renaissance & Reformation 11.3 (1987): 243-51.

---- “Different Kinds of Failure: Quevedo's Revisions to ‘Miré los muros de la patria mía.’" Modern Language Review 84.1 (1989): 66-76.

Morley, S. Griswold. “New Interpretations of Spanish Poetry: A Sonnet of Quevedo.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies (Liverpool) 18 (1941): 226-28.

Muñoz González, Luis. “La navegación de Quevedo.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 92 (1973): 115-37.

Navarro de Kelley, Emilia. La poesía metafísica de Quevedo. Madrid: Guadarrama, 1973. 49-51.

Neruda, Pablo. “Quevedo.” Cruz y Raya 3.33 (1935): 83-101.

Price, R.M. An Anthology of Quevedo's Poetry. Manchester: UP, 1969. 97-98.

Price, R.M. “A Note on the Sources and Structure of ‘Miré los muros de la patria mia.'” Modern Language Notes 78 (1963): 194-99.

Rey, Alfonso. ed. Poesía moral (Polimnia). By Francisco de Quevedo. Madrid: Tamesis, 1992. 99-101, 224.

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