«Tan mal francés como gastas»: syphilis in the poetry of Quevedo

Quevedo is the author of a number of well-known representations of syphilis. Taking a step back from traditionalist interpretations of these passages, which focus on autobiographic readings and the operation of Quevedo’s notoriously pyrotechnic poetics of ingenio, this article recovers the pictorial aspects of Quevedo’s corporeal representations. The exposed and diseased body, rendered ekphrastically in detail as a visual object to contemplate, operates doubly as a source of graphic sexual fixation and as a vehicle for poetic slippages. Moral cautions over the dark side of carnal love thus overlap with the suggestive—pornographic—evocation of that same carnality.