Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200-1750

Description

Beyond Sight, edited by Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal, explores the ways in which Iberian writers crafted images of both Old and New Worlds using the non-visual senses (hearing, smell, taste, and touch). The contributors argue that the uses of these senses are central to understanding Iberian authors and thinkers from the pre- and early modern periods. Medievalists delve into the poetic interiorizations of the sensorial plane to show how sacramental and purportedly miraculous sensory experiences were central to the effort of affirming faith and understanding indigenous peoples in the Americas. Renaissance and early modernist essays shed new light on experiences of pungent, bustling ports and city centres, and the exotic musical performances of empire. This insightful collection covers a wide array of approaches including literary and cultural history, philosophical aesthetics, affective and cognitive studies, and theories of embodiment. Beyond Sight expands the field of sensory studies to focus on the Iberian Peninsula and its colonies from historical, literary, and cultural perspectives. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: Sensing Religion 1 The Breath of Lazarus in the Mocedades de Rodrigo 2 Sabrosa olor: The Role of Olfaction and Smells in Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora Part Two: Cognition and the Senses 3 The Internal Senses in Don Quixote and the Anatomy of Memory 4 Taste, Cognition, and Redemption in Guzmán de Alfarache 5 The Aesthetics of Disgust in Miguel de Cervantes and María de Zayas Part Three: Perception 6 Sight, Sound, Scent, and Sense: Reading the Cancionero de Palacio 7 Treating Sensory Ailments in Early Modern Domestic Literature 8 Cervantes’s Exemplary Sensorium, or the Skinny on La española inglesa Part Four: Sensing Empire 9 The Senses of Empire and the Scents of Babylon in the Libro de Alexandre 10 Portuguese Scenes of the Senses, Medieval and Early Modern 11 Eucharistic Thought and Imperial Longing in Portugal from Amadeus da Silva’s Apocalypsis Nova (1502) to António Vieira’s História do Futuro (1663–1667) 12 Festive Soundscapes in Colonial Potosí and Minas Gerais Part Five: Sensing the Urban 13 Celestial Visions and Demonic Touch: García’s Inventions in La verdad sospechosa 14 Motherhood Interrupted: Sensing Birth in Early Modern Spanish Literature Bibliography Contributors Index