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
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Page xiv
... blood of Christ , and the baptismal sacrament that through the opera- tion of words and water converts infidels - synonymous in early mod- ern Spain with Muslims and Jews — or innocents - young children or Amerindians , to the extent ...
... blood of Christ , and the baptismal sacrament that through the opera- tion of words and water converts infidels - synonymous in early mod- ern Spain with Muslims and Jews — or innocents - young children or Amerindians , to the extent ...
Page xv
... blood of a converso or Morisco Other ( at a moment when exclusion becomes overtly racialized through the institution of purity of blood statutes ) , or , finally , the will of the wife , manifested in the desires of her body . These ...
... blood of a converso or Morisco Other ( at a moment when exclusion becomes overtly racialized through the institution of purity of blood statutes ) , or , finally , the will of the wife , manifested in the desires of her body . These ...
Page xvii
... blood ) statutes . Calderón writes El médico de su honra at a moment in which limpieza statutes were the subject of fierce debates : between proponents of a softening or relajamiento ( relaxation ) of those statutes ( a position linked ...
... blood ) statutes . Calderón writes El médico de su honra at a moment in which limpieza statutes were the subject of fierce debates : between proponents of a softening or relajamiento ( relaxation ) of those statutes ( a position linked ...
Page 3
... blood , all those Jews who shouted and said let his blood be on them and their children , they and all their descendants remained with this blemish , plague , and perpetual sign so that every month they suffer a flow of blood like women ...
... blood , all those Jews who shouted and said let his blood be on them and their children , they and all their descendants remained with this blemish , plague , and perpetual sign so that every month they suffer a flow of blood like women ...
Page 8
... blood of a cristiano nuevo might be understood , then , as the vestigial traces of an Otherness that was thought to have been left behind , a mark of recidivism and contamination that was at once feared and desired. 8 Perfect Wives ...
... blood of a cristiano nuevo might be understood , then , as the vestigial traces of an Otherness that was thought to have been left behind , a mark of recidivism and contamination that was at once feared and desired. 8 Perfect Wives ...
Contents
1 | |
Pasos de un peregrino Luis de Leon Reads the Perfect Wife | 48 |
The Perfected Wife Signs of Adultery and the Adultery of Signs in Calderons El medico de su honra | 109 |
Sor Juanas Empenos The Imperfect Wife | 165 |
Como anillo al dedo | 205 |
Notes | 217 |
Bibliography | 283 |
Index | 299 |
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Common terms and phrases
accident adultery alignment analogy anxieties argue baroque bien blood buena Calderón casa Castaño catachresis Christ comedia conduct manuals containment converso cosmetic 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 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 misogyny Morisco mujer nombres de Cristo Obras 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 Spanish Golden Age specifically suggests Tesoro textual threat tion trans transgression Translation transubstantiation transvestism treatise University Press vida wife's body wives woman women words