Rhetoric and Reality in Early Modern Spain (Monografías A, 227) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1855661276 ISBN 13: 9781855661271

Publisher: Tamesis Books, 2006

Synopsis

Early modern Spain's insistent rhetorics of nation and kingship, of a monolithic body of shared values and beliefs, especially in respect of racial and gender stereotypes, and of a centralized and ostensibly absolutist legislative apparatus did not map unproblematically onto the complex topography of everyday life. This volume explores the extent to which these rhetorics and the ideology they helped to construct or underpin reflected or failed to reflect the realities of social, economic, and cultural life. It sets against their typically exorbitant claims the lived, messy, and sometimes contradictory experience of Spaniards across a broad social spectrum, both at the centre and at the margins, not just of peninsular society, but of the Hispanic world overseas. Confronting ideology were questions of economic pragmatism, executive feasibility, jurisdictional competence, and, above all, the social and political complexity of the Spain of the period. RICHARD J. PYM is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. Contributors: TREVOR J. DADSON, MARGARET RICH GREER, BARRY IFE, ALISTAIR MALCOLM, MELVEENA MCKENDRICK, RICHARD J. PYM, HELEN RAWLINGS, ALEXANDER SAMSON, JULES WHICKER

About this title

Review:

A superb collection of essays that share, among other features, an interest in challenging certain conceptions, or accepted views, of history and of literary history. Individually and collectively, the essays are enlightening and inspiring, full of ideas that whet the critical appetite. ARIZONA JOURNAL OF HISPANIC CULTURAL STUDIES

About this edition

• Publisher: Tamesis Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1855661276
• ISBN 13: 9781855661271
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 190
• Editor: Pym Richard J.