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The Mystical Science of the Soul explores the unexamined influence of medieval discourses of science and spirituality on recogimiento, the unique Spanish genre of recollection mysticism that served as the driving force behind the principal developments in Golden Age mysticism. Building on recent research in medieval optics, physiology, and memory in relation to the devotional practices of the late Middle Ages, Jessica A. Boon probes the implications of an ‘embodied soul’ for the intellectual history of Spanish mysticism. Boon proposes a fundamental rereading of the key recogimiento text Subida del Monte Sión (1535/1538), which melds the traditionally distinct spiritual techniques of moral self-examination, Passion meditation, and negative theology into one cognitively adept path towards mystical union. She is also the first English-language scholar to treat the author of this influential work – the Renaissance physician Bernardino de Laredo, a pivotal figure in the transition from medieval to early modern spirituality on the Iberian peninsula and a source for Teresa of Avila’s mystical language.
In Gendered Crime and Punishment, Stacey Schlau mines the Inquisitional archive of Spain and Latin America in order to uncover the words and actions of accused women as transcribed in the trial records of the Holy Office. Although these are mediated texts, filtered through the formulae and norms of the religious institution that recorded them, much can be learned about the prisoners’ individual aspirations and experiences, as well as about the rigidly hierarchical, yet highly multicultural societies in which they lived. Chapters on Judaizing, false visions, possession by the Devil, witchcraft, and sexuality utilize case studies to unpack hegemonic ideologies and technologies, as well as individual responses. Filling in a gap in our understanding of the dynamics of gender in the early modern/colonial period, as it relates to women and gender, the book contributes to the growing scholarship in Inquisition cultural studies.
The Golden Age of Spanish mysticism has traditionally been read in terms of individual authors or theological traditions. God Made Word, however, considers early modern Spanish mysticism as a question of language and as a discourse that circulated in concrete social, institutional, and geographic spaces. Proposing a new reading of early modern Spanish mysticism, God Made Word traces the struggles over the representation of interiorized spiritual union – the tension between making it known and conveying its unknowability – far beyond the usual canon of mystic literature. Dale Shuger combines a study of genres that have traditionally been the object of literary study, including poetry, theatre, and autobiography, with a language-based analysis of other areas that have largely been studied by historians and theologians. Arguing that these generic separations grew out of an increasing preoccupation with the cultivation and control of interiorized spirituality, God Made Word shows that by tracing certain mystic representations we come to understand the emergence of different discursive rules and expectations for a wide range of representations of the ineffable.
Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics examines environmental themes and questions about the evolving relationship between humans and animals in nine modern and contemporary French novels. Considering arguments from both environmentalists and ecoskeptics, it concludes that, far from distancing itself from humanism as it often has, environmentalism must embrace an inclusive and ecological humanism.
The Politics and Poetics of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz examines the role of occasional verse in the works of the celebrated colonial Mexican nun. The poems that Sor Juana wrote for special occasions (birthdays, funerals, religious feasts, coronations, and the like) have been considered inconsequential by literary historians; but from a socio-historical perspective, George Antony Thomas argues they hold a particular interest for scholars of colonial Latin American literature. For Thomas, these compositions establish a particular set of rhetorical strategies, which he labels the author's 'political aesthetics.' He demonstrates how this body of the famous nun's writings, previously overlooked by scholars, sheds new light on Sor Juana's interactions with individuals in colonial society and throughout the Spanish Empire.
This is a 207 page book filled with heart warming short stories that propel you to your own dream world as you cuddle up in your cozy warm inviting bed. As you read many different types of stories you will form a path of entertaining journeys and take on various forms of life with interesting creative adventures. If you love short stories you will love this book. The print is large and on a easy read white background.
In The Epic of Juan Latino, Elizabeth R. Wright tells the story of Renaissance Europe's first black poet and his epic poem on the naval battle of Lepanto, Austrias Carmen (The Song of John of Austria). Piecing together the surviving evidence, Wright traces Latino's life in Granada, Iberia's last Muslim metropolis, from his early clandestine education as a slave in a noble household to his distinguished career as a schoolmaster at the University of Granada. When intensifying racial discrimination and the chaos of the Morisco Revolt threatened Latino's hard-won status, he set out to secure his position by publishing an epic poem in Latin verse, the Austrias Carmen, that would demonstrate his mastery of Europe's international literary language and celebrate his own African heritage. Through Latino's remarkable, hitherto untold story, Wright illuminates the racial and religious tensions of sixteenth-century Spain and the position of black Africans within Spain's nascent empire and within the emerging African diaspora.
Traces the processes and paradoxes at work in the late parodic poetry of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, illuminating correlations and connections.
A careful re-evaluation of pastoral poetics in the early modern Hispanic literature of Spain and Latin America. In her analysis of the verse of representative poets of the Hispanic Baroque, Holloway demonstrates how these writers occupy an Arcadia which is de-familiarised and yet remains connected to the classical origins of the mode. Herstudy includes recent manuscript discoveries from the Spanish Baroque (Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa, now attributed to the Gongorist poet Pedro Soto de Rojas), the poetry of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza and Francisco de Quevedo. The study considers pastoral as a global cultural phenomenon of the Early Modern period, its reverberations reaching as far as Vicereg...