Sigel, Scott

Dr. Scott Sigel is Associate Professor of Modern Languages at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. He specializes in the study of Romance and Classical Languages and Literatures. He completed his undergraduate work in Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where Stephen Gilman was his tutor. He studied Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley and completed his doctorate at Stanford University, studying with Alban Forcione. In addition to his scholarly interests, Professor Sigel has worked for many years as an interpreter in over 100 countries for people who face immigration and human rights issues.

The Baroque Poetry of Fernando de Herrera, 1534-1597: Decoro in the Spanish Poetry of the 16th and 17th Centuries

2007 0-7734-5464-0
This study examines the way in which poetry, in this case the poetry of Fernando de Herrera, could function as an expression, and not simply as the result, of significant change in the social and economic ordering in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish life. The rise of the monarchical order, now based on imperial interests, replaced the earlier medieval dependence on theological justifications for the sate with a newly defined structure of secular beliefs and behaviors. Part of this emerging secular order was felt in poetry as a system of regulating principles and practices known as poetic decorum. The emergence of this defined aesthetic of the secular is revealed in Fernando de Herrera’s poetry, in both his awareness and use of this system of decoro.