Bio

Henry Berlin is an associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His first monograph, Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late-Medieval Iberia (Toronto, 2021), won the 2023 award for the best Iberian-medieval study awarded by the magazine La corónica. He is currently working on an edition and English translation of Leal Conselheiro by King Duarte of Portugal and on two monographs: the first dedicated to the female voice and improvisation in medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas, and the second to medieval philosophical poetry, with a particular focus on the Crown of Aragon. His articles have appeared in magazines such as La corónica, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, Medieval Encounters and Hispanic Review. He recently completed an article on the contradiction in the “Cançó d'opòsits” by Jordi de Sant Jordi and in the “Cant espiritual” by Ausiàs March, which will appear in New Literary History.

Project

At Faberllull, he will study the “Cobla de dos senys” by Joan Roís de Corella, an apparently playful poem that, depending on how it is read, expresses two diametrically opposed points of view. Its ambivalence arises from the half-line structure of the verses, according to which the couplet can be read horizontally in one direction, or in two parallel columns in another. It will explore how this structure allows for a poetic approach to existential and ethical questions. Without asserting the "sincerity" of a playful genre, it will demonstrate that these experiments with poetic form could provide a unique perspective in cultural debates around pleasure, sadness and mourning.