Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World

Edited by Jason McCloskey, Ignacio López Alemany

Publication date:

22 March 2013

Length of book:

268 pages

Publisher

Bucknell University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611484960

Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World explores the representation of political, economic, military, religious, and juridical power in texts and artifacts from early modern Spain and her American viceroyalties. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of power in written texts, chapters also examine pieces of material culture including coats of arms, coins, paintings and engravings. As the essays demonstrate, many of these objects work to transform the amorphous concept of power into a material reality with considerable symbolic dimensions subject to, and dependent on, interpretation. With its broad approach to the discourses of power, Signs of Power brings together studies of both canonical literary works as well as more obscure texts and objects. The position of the works studied with respect to the official center of power also varies. Whereas certain essays focus on the ways in which portrayals of power champion the aspirations of the Spanish Crown, other essays attend to voices of dissent that effectively call into question that authority.

Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I.Myths of Power
One - Titian, Philip II, and Pagan Iconography
Anne J. Cruz
Two - Visual Eroticism, Poetic Voyeurism: Ekphrasis and the Complexities of Patronage in Góngora’s Fabula de Polifemo y Galatea
Lucia Binotti
Three - Hercules and the Statue Garden: Sansón Carrasco’s Ekphrastic and Imperial Contests in Don Quijote II.14
Frederick A. de Armas
Four - The Legend of Marus Curtius Romanus as a Sign of auctoritas in Early Modern Spain
Ignacio López Alemany
Part II.Challenges for Power
Five - Coins, Value and Trust: The Problematic of Vellón in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Culture
Elvira Vilches
Six - Tampering with Signs of Power: Juan de Palafox, Historiography, and the Limits of Heraldry
John Slater
Seven - Antonio Pérez and the Power of Treason
Ana María G. Laguna
Eight - Ius gentium and Just War: The Problem of Representation in Inca Garcilaso’s Royal Commentaries
José A. Cárdenas Bunsen
Nine - The Politics of Salvation in El Greco’s Escorial Paintings and Cervantes’s LaNumancia
E. C. Graf
Ten - Spain Succored by Religion: Titian and Lope de Vega’s La Dragontea
Jason McCloskey
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

This is a fascinating collection of essays by different authors who, by means of careful examinations of texts, shed light on the nature, status, and practice of power in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spain. . . .[T]he essays in this collection succeed in engaging the reader through their high level of scholarship on varied topics, all focused on the exercise and reception of Spanish Hapsburg power.