About

Luis F. Avilés is a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, with research interests that include Spanish and Portuguese literature and language. His work explores various themes within literary studies, including linguistic hospitality, border mediation crises, and the analysis of classical and modern texts. His publications demonstrate a focus on the interpretation of literary and cultural phenomena, such as Cervantes' works, the role of noise and sound in literature, and the significance of space and allegory in Cervantes' narratives. Avilés's scholarship also engages with contemporary issues like translation theory, the experience of immigrants, and the symbolic and material culture of Renaissance Europe. His contributions include detailed analyses of literary episodes, exploring their allegorical and historical meanings, and examining how space, sound, and language function within literary texts to reflect broader cultural and philosophical concerns.

Research topics

• Humanities
• Sociology
• Art
• Political Science
• Philosophy
• Aesthetics
• Literature
• Law
• Psychology
• Theology

Selected publications

• El (des)concertado reloj de la amistad en “El curioso impertinente” de Cervantes

  Cervantes Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America · 2024-04-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article studies the conceptualization and transformation of friendship in Cervantes's “El curioso impertinente.” The main focus of the essay is the correlation between friendship and time, stressing the importance of the image of a harmonious clock at the beginning of the novel and how the combination of a desire to be extremely fortunate and social imperatives of behavior dislocate and eventually destroy the clock of friendship. The essay demonstrates how a desire for antonomasia instrumentalizes friendship by requiring deception and ultimately transforming the friend into an other.

  PublisherDOI

• Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain by Faith S. Harden.

  Bulletin of the Comediantes · 2023

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Aesthetics

  B U L L E T I N O F T H E C O M E D I A N T E S 2 0 2 2 – 2 3 | v ol / 7 4 N º 1 + 2 p r e p u b l i c at i o n ( p r o j e c t m u s e ) 1 r e v i e w s Faith S. Harden. Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain. U of Toronto P, 2020. 188 pp. Luis F. Avilés University of California, Irvine This book analyzes a select number of autobiographies written by soldiers in early modern Spain, with a special emphasis on the literary and social forces that contributed to their authorial self-fashioning. The constitution of a first-person narrative voice depended upon several factors. Faith Harden’s approach focuses on the central role played by honor in the writing of a soldier’s experiences, at times imposing limits while at others promoting creativity and nuance. This allowed soldiers of lower social rank to infuse dignity in their writings even when their deeds were questionable. Honor was highly important for soldiers whose purpose was to receive a reward, enhance their stature, or simply produce a spectacle of their own self. Harden proposes that the fashioning of a self depended on a creative understanding of honor as a public extension of the author’s lived experiences in a complex economy of benefits, recognition, rewards, pleasure, social mobility, and the dangers of public self-exposure. Another factor crucial for fashioning an authorial voice was the diversity of genres available. Harden convincingly traces genres such as chivalric romances, lives of martyrs, military treatises, legal testimonies, and the picaresque novel, among others. She documents very well the variety of ways in which these genres were incorporated into soldiers’ autobiographies. Harden makes a strong argument for the importance of taking into account all the forces (literary, material, social, and sexual) that intervene in the creation of the written self. Chapter 1 is devoted to Diego García de Paredes’s (1468–1533) Breve Suma, giving an account of how he was able to appropriate and transform the negative perspective of the mercenary soldier into a record of experiences that are worthy of emulation. Harden focuses on the way García de Paredes emphasizes his strong sense of personal honor and camaraderie towards other soldiers, effectively counteracting the negative perception of mercenary soldiers by prospective readers. For this soldier-autobiographer, individuality and loyalty to himself and his fellow comrades was more important than obeying superiors. Harden identifies a shifting articulation of exemplarity as well, arguing that García de Paredes proposes himself as a heroic model for other soldiers. Exemplarity also stems from the chivalric code and how B U L L E T I N O F T H E C O M E D I A N T E S 2 0 2 2 – 2 3 | v ol / 7 4 N º 1 + 2 p r e p u b l i c at i o n ( p r o j e c t m u s e ) 2 it was appropriated by soldiers like Paredes, who were from lower social strata. Harden provides a lucid account of the idiosyncratic way in which the author makes use of the chivalric code, as for example, when he is implicated in various acts of intense violence, or when he demonstrates his lack of refinement towards women. In chapter 2 Harden focuses on what she describes as the “petitionary mode of life writing” (21) in the works of Diego Suárez Corvín (1552–1623) and Domingo de Toral y Valdés (1598–1635). The petitionary mode is characterized by a relationship of inequality between the writer and the intended receiver of the text. Thus, writing is meant to be a service that provides some worthwhile knowledge obtained though experience and study. For example, Harden argues that Suárez Corvín displays his own intellectual capacity, promotes truthfulness and credibility above fiction, and demonstrates moderation and sexual self-control, distancing himself from the traditional image of the unruly soldier. Exiled to what...

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• <i>No al concertado son, sino al ruido</i> : la acústica ruidosa en la ‘Canción desesperada’ de Grisóstomo

  Bulletin of Spanish Studies · 2023 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Humanities
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• La hospitalidad lingüística y la crisis de la mediación fronteriza en 'Los niños perdidos' de Valeria Luiselli

  Latin American Literary Review · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Humanities
  • Philosophy

  Este ensayo pone en diálogo algunas de las propuestas más importantes del pensamiento sobre la traducción literaria con Los niños perdidos de Valeria Luiselli. ¿De qué manera proposiciones tales como ‘acoger lo foráneo’, la aceptación de una ‘equivalencia sin adecuación’, lo intraducible, la ‘deficiencia aceptada’, el duo ‘traición/fidelidad’ y, en particular, la hospitalidad lingüística de Paul Ricoeur, nos ayudan a reflexionar sobre la narración de Luiselli en Los niños perdidos? Mi interés es explorar la experiencia singular de Luiselli como intérprete de la corte de inmigración y cómo la teoría de la traducción debe ser repensada a partir de las presiones ejercidas por el sistema legal fronterizo y su impacto en la forma en que se pueden recopilar, traducir y narrar los relatos de los niños inmigrantes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reviews of Books

  Bulletin of Spanish Studies · 2022-05-28

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  PublisherDOI

• Steven Hutchinson. <i>Frontier Narratives: Liminal Lives in the Early Modern Mediterranean</i>

  Calíope · 2021-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Steven Hutchinson’s Frontier Narratives: Liminal Lives in the Early Modern Mediterranean is an ambitious project that successfully traces the complex relations amongst races and cultures in the early modern Mediterranean. Following closely Fernand Braudel’s model of a greater Mediterranean with liquid frontiers and constant movement, in combination with George Simmel’s definition of “unity” (“harmonious and confrontational ‘dualistic’ relations”), Hutchinson explores traffic, exchanges, circulation, and interactions in contact zones. Working with an impressive variety of texts and genres and in various languages, Frontier Narratives is the welcome product of a mature scholar and a true comparatist. The book expands our understanding of the complex ways of being that produce what the author calls a “frontier consciousness,” one in constant negotiation with a complicated and challenging context that demands continual improvisations and performative responses. The aim of the book is to explore in a deeper way the diversity of voices that were the protagonists of what Hutchinson calls the “Mediterranean frontier narrative.”The book is divided into five chapters. The “Introduction” works as a first chapter and effectively lays out the methodology and overall critical approach to the project. The second chapter, entitled “Slaves,” explores what Hutchinson calls “Mediterranean frontier slavery,” distinguishing it from the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic African slave trades. He argues that if compared to the two other types of slavery, what makes Mediterranean frontier slavery unique is the fact that it had “nothing to do with race at all” (42). For Hutchinson, other key factors came into play, such as religious difference, economic considerations, and political opposition. In fact, he questions the effectiveness of the category of the “Other” in the Mediterranean contact zones. Hutchinson proposes instead that what predominates is an extended familiarity among cultures and even religions, with the possibility of integration to another culture or a return to the homeland, something that was quite difficult (if not impossible) in the Trans-Saharan and the slavery originating in West Africa. These possibilities allow Hutchinson to propose a geographical uniqueness in the Mediterranean. One of the strongest aspects of this book is that the author provides many examples that effectively illustrate the singularity of this slave trade. Hutchinson refers to several individual testimonies and stories from figures such as João Carvalho Mascarenhas, Jerónimo Gracián, Emanuel d’Aranda, and Laurent d’Arvieux (among others), along with literary examples from Cervantes, strongly supporting the argument in favor of a uniquely Mediterranean practice of slavery. Even more significant is Hutchinson’s attention to the experiences of enslaved women, a major absence in previous critical and historical accounts. In many accounts women were treated as erotic possessions that could be exchanged from owner to owner as gifts. However, other possibilities are documented, such as marriage or integration into Maghribian or Turkish culture, a path not available in contexts of enslavement outside the Mediterranean.In Chapter 3, Hutchinson tackles the enigmatic figure of the renegade. The Mediterranean renegade represents a true challenge to scholarly work, since there is a near absence of texts written by renegades themselves. Furthermore, one must rely on narratives that are intensely hostile to them, including those written by authors such as Antonio de Sosa and even Cervantes. The Christian side had a deep antipathy towards renegades, and the existing narratives tend to describe them with exaggerations and stereotypes. Undeterred by these circumstances, Hutchinson attempts to work through and around these obstacles by analyzing texts and documents from multiple languages, disciplines, and genres, searching for narrations, descriptions, and ideological points of view. As he did in the previous chapter, Hutchinson provides multiple examples of individual renegades, demonstrating how important they were to the economies and exchanges among cultures (exchanges that did not preclude conflict). In fact, the book argues for an understanding of the Mediterranean as a space where renegades thrived and became protagonists of its contact zones. One of the most significant contributions of this chapter is a clarification of the role of religion in a renegade’s conversion. Hutchinson argues quite convincingly that religious belief was not the prime motive for changing sides and that there were many other factors at play. In fact, it is difficult to know with any certainty what renegades truly believed. What is crucial is the way they acted. They display a split identity and a conflictive personality that is difficult to ascertain. This multiplicity of character and undecidability leads Hutchinson to keenly conclude that concepts such as identity, hybridity, assimilation, or syncretism have a limited usefulness when it comes time to give an account of a renegade’s various performative actions and decisions.If a chapter best illustrates Frontier Narratives’ guiding principle of listening and being attentive to the words of the protagonists of the Mediterranean, it would be Chapter 4. Dedicated to martyrs, the chapter challenges the limitations of pre-conceived definitions of what martyrdom means. For example, if to be a martyr is defined by a willingness to die and suffer great pain defending one’s religious beliefs, Hutchinson finds that this definition does not fit many of the cases of martyrdom that he explores. Some so-called martyrs “provoked their own martyrdom” (138) and did not necessarily do so in defense of their religion. In many instances narratives of martyrdom are tainted by later interpretations, at times functioning as highly propagandistic rhetorical devices that intensify the emotional impact of such deaths. Again, for Hutchinson, individual cases point out problems with definitions and assumptions on the part of scholars. He carefully avoids the pitfalls of ready-made concepts and the force exerted by certain words that have often been taken for granted. Hutchinson does acknowledge the cruelty perpetrated in the Mediterranean on all sides. However, his close attention to intentions and actions allows for a more complex and nuanced view of martyrdom, one that values individual cases and experiences over general, preconceived ideas.With the title “Counternarratives,” the fifth and last chapter of the book is devoted to Moriscos. After the expulsion of 1609–13, they revealed their adaptability to Mediterranean frontier zones. As foreigners, they were ideal: “mobile, capable, adaptable, loyal and predisposed to confront the Christian north and to fit in culturally and religiously in the Islamic south and east” (154–55). Throughout the book, Hutchinson values rhetorical and textual analysis as cornerstones of his approach to the complexity of the Mediterranean. In fact, close reading rescues the richness of narrations and documents from what have become comfortably entrenched statements reproduced by scholars. For example, in the discourses on Moriscos one needs to account for the diverse intonations found in what may appear to be similar statements that, read carefully, can produce quite different meanings. Hutchinson proceeds to illustrate this by way of four short textual examples of intolerance that, on the surface, seem to be saying the same thing but turn out to be saying something quite different. He then proceeds to focus on how Cervantes deals with the topic of the expulsion and Moriscos. He pays close attention to the strategies of intolerance and how Cervantes both mimics and undermines such rhetoric. His reading of the character of Ricote is fascinating. Hutchinson argues that with Ricote Cervantes mimics anti-Morisco rhetoric and eschews invoking religion or “a cosmic scheme” that would justify the expulsion, opting instead to stress the affective bonds among characters, what Hutchinson calls Abencerrajismo (an emphasis on hospitality, dialogue, and friendship). Other works by Cervantes reflect the inclusion of alternatives to violence through episodes of friendship and reciprocity. In a sense, what Hutchinson emphasizes is fluidity and contact over otherness, separation, the inability to communicate, a lack of knowledge of other cultures, and religious intolerance. Even though he recognizes that there were cases of intolerance and violence among the diversity of cultures in the Mediterranean, he still points out the multiple examples in which negotiations were indeed not only possible but preferred. These counternarratives, some of them too often ignored, transcend the barriers of ethnicity, religion, language, and gender.Frontier Narratives rewards the reader with a comprehensive conclusion that effectively and convincingly lays out an alternative Mediterranean. Hutchinson judiciously follows the methodological path he charts, concluding that the complexity of the Mediterranean needs to be understood as a unity (again following Braudel and Simmel), characterized by a plural alterity (not distant otherness) capable of adaptation and improvisation. The Mediterranean frontier is a space in which popular conceptions of religion can be much more generalized than rigid dogma, where action may be more significant than thoughts, where modes of becoming do not project a distinct identity. Hutchinson is a scholar that has avoided the lure of ontological certainties and the “clear” meanings inherited from previous scholarship. With solid bibliographical research, he allows the subject he studies to determine how far existing words or concepts should serve us, and when we need to seriously re-think them in the context of what we are reading. Frontier Narratives is an innovative and fascinating book, a major achievement of interdisciplinary and comparative scholarship, and one that will significantly improve our understanding of the Mediterranean and its complex liminal spaces. It represents a much-needed recuperation of how our literary approach to language may contribute to the work of historians, anthropologists, and several other fields. Frontier Narratives is destined to become a key point of reference, a book that will surely alter for the better the interdisciplinary directions of the field of Mediterranean Studies and beyond.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Tan desaforado salto</i>: The Taming of Cratilo’s Horse in Cervantes’s <i>Persiles y Sigismunda</i>

  Cervantes Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America · 2019-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  El ensayo examina uno de los más célebres episodios de la novela Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda de Cervantes. En la larga narración que hace Periandro de sus aventuras marítimas en búsqueda de Auristela (Libro II), cuenta cómo de una manera precipitada y sin mucha reflexión logra domar el bello y salvaje caballo del rey Cratilo. El ensayo vuelve sobre varias de las interpretaciones más significativas que se han ofrecido del episodio y cómo se han dividido en dos grandes acercamientos: por un lado, el problema de la verosimilitud, los excesos narrativos, la falsedad y la mentira y, por otro, una aproximación emblemática que se concentra en el tópico del caballo como símbolo de descontrol. El ensayo propone una lectura más amplia de la aventura del caballo de Cratilo, dando cuenta de la alta complejidad de la narración e identificando otros aspectos fundamentales que han sido excluidos por la crítica, tales como la liberalidad, los peligros del agradecimiento y el intercambio de bienes y regalos.

  PublisherDOI

• Lidiar con las complejidad del otro: confiar y desconfiar en el Persiles y Segismunda

  2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tan desaforado salto: The Taming of Cratilo's Horse in Cervantes's Persiles y Sigismunda

  Cervantes Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  El ensayo examina uno de los más célebres episodios de la novela Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda de Cervantes. En la larga narración que hace Periandro de sus aventuras marítimas en búsqueda de Auristela (Libro II), cuenta cómo de una manera precipitada y sin mucha reflexión logra domar el bello y salvaje caballo del rey Cratilo. El ensayo vuelve sobre varias de las interpretaciones más significativas que se han ofrecido del episodio y cómo se han dividido en dos grandes acercamientos: por un lado, el problema de la verosimilitud, los excesos narrativos, la falsedad y la mentira y, por otro, una aproximación emblemática que se concentra en el tópico del caballo como símbolo de descontrol. El ensayo propone una lectura más amplia de la aventura del caballo de Cratilo, dando cuenta de la alta complejidad de la narración e identificando otros aspectos fundamentales que han sido excluidos por la crítica, tales como la liberalidad, los peligros del agradecimiento y el intercambio de bienes y regalos.

  PublisherDOI

• El licenciado Vidriera: Reflexiones sobre el “freak” y el loco/cuerdo en Cervantes

  University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy (University of Minnesota) · 2018-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Luis Guillermo Segura Herrera

  Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

  2 shared

• Arnoldo Téllez López

  Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

  2 shared

• Diana Rocio Villegas Guinea

  Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo

  2 shared

• Dehisy Marisol Juárez García

  Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

  2 shared

• Frederick A. de Armas

  1 shared

• Christopher Conway

  Fordham University

  1 shared

• Joan F. Cammarata

  Manhattan College

  1 shared

• Céire Broderick

  University College Cork

  1 shared