Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and Inquisition in Early Modern SpainDuke University Press, 13. veebr 2001 - 328 pages In Perfect Wives, Other Women Georgina Dopico Black examines the role played by women’s bodies—specifically the bodies of wives—in Spain and Spanish America during the Inquisition. In her quest to show how both the body and soul of the married woman became the site of anxious inquiry, Dopico Black mines a variety of Golden Age texts for instances in which the era’s persistent preoccupation with racial, religious, and cultural otherness was reflected in the depiction of women. Subject to the scrutiny of a remarkable array of gazes—inquisitors, theologians, religious reformers, confessors, poets, playwrights, and, not least among them, husbands—the bodies of perfect and imperfect wives elicited diverse readings. Dopico Black reveals how imperialism, the Inquisition, inflation, and economic decline each contributed to a correspondence between the meanings of these human bodies and “other” bodies, such as those of the Jew, the Moor, the Lutheran, the degenerate, and whoever else departed from a recognized norm. The body of the wife, in other words, became associated with categories separate from anatomy, reflecting the particular hermeneutics employed during the Inquisition regarding the surveillance of otherness. Dopico Black’s compelling argument will engage students of Spanish and Spanish American history and literature, gender studies, women’s studies, social psychology and cultural studies. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 85
Page 68
... Fray Luis re- peatedly defends the propriety of Spanish as a language suitable for treating any subject , from the most lofty to the most mundane.33 Despite Fray Luis's defiant outspokenness on the matter , the issue of vernacular ...
... Fray Luis re- peatedly defends the propriety of Spanish as a language suitable for treating any subject , from the most lofty to the most mundane.33 Despite Fray Luis's defiant outspokenness on the matter , the issue of vernacular ...
Page 69
... Fray Luis's hands . Roads to Rome The excesses and contradictions that beset ( and even adorn ) the tex- tual body of La perfecta casada are perhaps most visible in Fray Luis's almost hysterical diatribes against the casada's use of ...
... Fray Luis's hands . Roads to Rome The excesses and contradictions that beset ( and even adorn ) the tex- tual body of La perfecta casada are perhaps most visible in Fray Luis's almost hysterical diatribes against the casada's use of ...
Page 211
... Fray Luis's take on the wife's body is in some respects the most complex of the three . La perfecta casada can be read not only as a conduct manual in the traditional sense , but also as a manual about interpretation that poignantly ...
... Fray Luis's take on the wife's body is in some respects the most complex of the three . La perfecta casada can be read not only as a conduct manual in the traditional sense , but also as a manual about interpretation that poignantly ...
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
accident adultery aligned analogy anxieties argue baroque bien blood buena Calderón casa Castaño Christ comedia conduct manuals containment converso cosmetic Counter Reformation Covarrubias cross-dressing Cruz cuerpo cultural dagger desire Dios discourses early modern Spain empeños Enrique esto eucharistic female body feminine Fray Luis Fray Luis's gender Gutierre Gutierre's hand hermeneutic Hispanic hombre honor dramas honor plays honra Howard Bloch husband illegibility Inquisition inquisitorial inscribes interpretation italics Juan legibility lengua Leonor limpieza de sangre literal Luis de León Madrid makeup male marital marriage married means médico Mencía's Mencía's body metaphor Mexico misogyny Morisco mujer nombres de Cristo palabras passage Pedro perfect wife perfecta casada perhaps problematic pues question ramera reading relation Renaissance rhetoric sacrament semiotic sense sexual sino somatic Sor Juana Inés sort Spanish specifically suggests Tesoro textual threat tion trans transgression Translation transubstantiation transvestism treatise University Press vida wife's body wives woman women words