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
... concerns itself with the various tensions that animate readings of the wife's body and in a sense make possible its use as this sort of " transcoder " of other discourses and anxieties . In the pages that follow I trace a relation ...
... concerns itself with the various tensions that animate readings of the wife's body and in a sense make possible its use as this sort of " transcoder " of other discourses and anxieties . In the pages that follow I trace a relation ...
Page 4
... concerns over the interpretation and misinterpretation of signs and especially signs of Otherness—racial, religious, cultural—were at different times pro- jected, materialized, codified, negotiated, and even contested. On one hand, it ...
... concerns over the interpretation and misinterpretation of signs and especially signs of Otherness—racial, religious, cultural—were at different times pro- jected, materialized, codified, negotiated, and even contested. On one hand, it ...
Page 7
... concerns over the excesses of interpretation and the threats of illeg- ibility , that is , the difficulties of reading , the impossibility of knowing a body , a text , in itself . The stakes of this initial gesture seem clear : the body ...
... concerns over the excesses of interpretation and the threats of illeg- ibility , that is , the difficulties of reading , the impossibility of knowing a body , a text , in itself . The stakes of this initial gesture seem clear : the body ...
Page 10
... concern and activity fluctuated tremendously over the course of its 359 - year history . This adaptability derives in part from its founding mandate , “ Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus " [ examines the disposi- tions of genuine ...
... concern and activity fluctuated tremendously over the course of its 359 - year history . This adaptability derives in part from its founding mandate , “ Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus " [ examines the disposi- tions of genuine ...
Page 14
... concerned , this difference can be seen as hinging , in large part , on the possibility of at- tributing or imposing meaning on the body as a site of reading.14 That conduct literature of the sort that flourished throughout sixteenth ...
... concerned , this difference can be seen as hinging , in large part , on the possibility of at- tributing or imposing meaning on the body as a site of reading.14 That conduct literature of the sort that flourished throughout sixteenth ...
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