Description
Book SynopsisExamines the role played by women's bodies - specifically the bodies of wives - in Spain and Spanish America during the Inquisition. This title reveals how imperialism, the Inquisition, inflation, and economic decline each contributed to a correspondence between the meanings of these human bodies and "other" bodies.
Trade Review“
Perfect Wives, Other Women is a theoretically informed and elegantly conceived study that combines sharp focus and broad scope. A superb work.”—James D. Fernández, author of
Apology to Apostrophe: Autobiography and the Rhetoric of Self-Representation in Spain“Perfect Wives, Other Women is a remarkable and brilliant work. Ample in scope, lucidly and vividly argued, it traces the taut histories that link the figure of the
wife with the languages and institutions of
inquisition in the literary, legal, and religious cultures of early modern Spain. It is indispensable reading not just for students of Spain´s Golden Age, but also for those interested in the articulation of institutional cultures and the somatic imaginary in early modern European culture more broadly.”—Jacques Lezra, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
1. Visible Signs: Reading the Wife’s Body in Early Modern Spain
2. “Pasos de un peregrino”: Luis de León Reads the Perfect Wife
3. The Perfected Wife: Signs of Adultery and the Adultery of Signs in Calderón’s
El médico de su honra 4. Sor Juana’s
Empeños: The Imperfect Wife
Conclusion: Como anillo al dedo
Notes
Bibliography
Index
