Although the Spanish Inquisition looms large in many conceptions of the early modern Hispanic world, relatively few studies have been made of the Spanish state and Inquisition s approach to book censorship in the seventeenth century. Merging archival and rare book research with a case study of the fiction of Baltasar Gracián, this book argues that privileged authors, like the Jesuit Gracián, circumvented publication strictures that were meant to ensure that printed materials conformed to the standards of Catholicism and supported the goals of the absolute monarchy. In contrast to some elite authors who composed readily transparent critiques of authorities and encountered difficulties with the state and Inquisition, others, like Gracián, made their criticisms covertly in complicated texts like El Criticón.

Arts of Perception offers a new account of a key period in Spanish history and culture and a fundamental reassessment of its major writers and intellectuals, including Gracián, Quevedo, Calderón, Saavedra Fajardo, López de Vega, and Sor Juana. Reading these figures in the context of European thought and the new science, and philosophy, the study considers how they developed various ‘arts of perception’ - complex perceptual strategies designed to overcome and exploit epistemic problems to enable an individual to act effectively in the moral, political, social or religious sphere. The study takes as its subject the distinctive epistemological mentality behind such ‘arts of perception’. This mentality was fostered by the creative interaction of scepticism and Stoicism, and found expression in the key concepts ser/parecer and engaño/desengaño. The work traces the emergence, development, and impact of these concepts on Spanish thought and culture. As well as offering new interpretations of specific major figures, Arts of Perception offers an interpretation of the mentality of an entire culture as it made the fraught transition to intellectual modernity. As such it ranges over numerous discourses and formative contexts and provides a wealth of new material which will be of use to all those seeking to understand and interpret the literature, culture and thought of Golden Age Spain. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Bulletin of Spanish Studies.

This is the final volume of Smith's distinguished and groundbreaking trilogy on hispanic literature. For the first time, it gives a theoretical account of "race" and nationality in Spanish and Spanish-American literature, covering a wide range of texts--from Spain, Mexico, and Argentina--from the fifteenth century to the present day.

This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

In this study on the subject of the Spanish courtly gentleman of the sixteenth century, the author traces the courtly gentleman's life ideals as they appear first in Montalvo's Amadis de Gaula and later in Il Cortegiano of Castiglione. The study also appraises what new perspectives and attitudes are at the center of Castiglione's view of cortegiania and how these elements are reflected in other Spanish courtesy books subsequent to The Courtier's arrival and publication in Spain. In the last part of the book, the author deals with the theme of courtliness in Don Quixote and with Cervantes's attitude toward the courtier's pursuits, aspirations, and lifestyle. He also analyzes, through the study of selected works of Calderón and Gracián, certain problems of self-perception, moral conscience, and outlook that distinguish the ideal man of the baroque age, as envisioned by these authors, from his renaissance counterpart. On the whole, the study points to the gradual change and process of secularization of the courtier's ideal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to the decline of traditional thought and myths about class limitations and human potential.