In Edging Toward Iberia Jean Dangler proposes a combination of network theory by Manuel Castells and World-Systems Analysis as devised by Immanuel Wallerstein to show how network and system principles can be employed to conceptualize and analyze nonmodern Iberia.

Nonmodern Iberia was a fluid space of shifting political kingdoms and culturally diverse communities. Scholars have long used a series of obsolete investigative frameworks such as the Reconquista, along with modern ideas of nation-states, periodization, and geography that are inadequate to the study of Iberia’s complex heterogeneity. In Edging Toward Iberia Jean Dangler argues that new tools and frameworks for research are needed. She proposes a combination of network theory by Manuel Castells and World-Systems Analysis as devised by Immanuel Wallerstein to show how network and system principles can be employed to conceptualize and analyze nonmodern Iberia in more comprehensive ways. Network principles are applied to the well-known themes of medieval trade and travel, along with the socioeconomic conditions of feudalism, slavery, and poverty to demonstrate how questions of power and temporal-historical change may be addressed through system tenets. Edging Toward Iberia challenges current historical and literary research methods and brings a fresh perspective on the examination of politics, identity, and culture.

A captivating study of translation, adaptation, and intellectual cross-pollination that situates the Castilian Hermes in the center of medieval Mediterranean cultural exchange Hermes Trismegistus, a Hellenistic conflation of the Greek Hermes (god of interpretative wisdom) and the Egyptian Thoth (god of wisdom) was considered by many in the medieval world as the father of culture. Between c. 300 BCE - c. 1200 CE various treatises were attributed to the legendary sage, becoming known as the Hermetica - a combination of diverse philosophical and spiritual systems, addressing subjects such as alchemy, magic, and astrology. The Hermetica circulated widely, with premodern translations in Latin, Hebrew, Syriac, Persian, Arabic, and other Eastern languages. Whilst these iterations have been thoroughly researched, little attention has been paid to the Castilian Hermes, the first rendition of the wisdom traditions of Hermes Trismegistus in a Romance language. This book follows the ways in which Hermetic knowledge was brought to the Iberian Peninsula, showing how Hermes became the philosophical and spiritual inspiration for Christian, Arabic, and Jewish scholars there. Udaondo Alegre unveils the pivotal role of King Alfonso X ("the Learned") of Castile (1252-84) in creating this Spanish Hermes. Through the meticulous tracing of source texts and literary influences, the author explores the myriad ways in which Hermes crossed religious and linguistic boundaries to embody a composite intellectual identity, emblematic of medieval Spain's multicultural ethos. Alfonso's court is revealed as the site for a unique convergence of translation and interpretation that shaped a distinctly "Hispanic" Hermes.

Miguel de Cervantes’s experimentation with theatricality is frequently tied to the notion of revelation and disclosure of hidden truths. Drawing the Curtain showcases the elements of theatricality that characterize Cervantes’s prose and analyses the ways in which he uses theatricality in his own literary production. Bringing together the works of well-known scholars, who draw from a variety of disciplines and theoretical approaches, this collection demonstrates how Cervantes exploits revelation and disclosure to create dynamic dramatic moments that surprise and engage observers and readers. Hewing closely to Peter Brook’s notion of the bare or empty stage, Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín argue that Cervantes’s omnipresent concern with theatricality manifests not only in his drama but also in the myriad metatheatrical instances dispersed throughout his prose works. In doing so, Drawing the Curtain sheds light on the ways in which Cervantes forces his readers to engage with themes that are central to his life and works, including love, freedom, truth, confinement, and otherness.

Chronicling sixteenth-century Spain to the present day, Beyond Human aims to decentre the human and acknowledge the material historicity of more-than-human nature. The book explores key questions relating to ecological equity, justice, and responsibility within and beyond Spain in the Anthropocene. Examining relations between Iberian cultural practices, historical developments, and ecological processes, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, and the contributors to this volume reveal the structures that uphold and dismantle the non-human–human dichotomy and nature-culture divide. The book critiques works from the Golden Age to the twenty-first century in a wide range of genres, including comedia, royal treatises, agricultural reports, paintings, satirical essays, horror fiction and film, young adult and speculative literature, poetry, graphic novels, and television series. The authors contend that Spanish cultural studies must expose the material historicity that entangles today’s ecological crises and ecosocial injustices with previous, future, and contemporary entities. The book argues that this will require the simultaneous decentring of the human and of the Anthropocene as an ecocritical framework. By standardizing ecosocial analysis and widening avenues for ecopedagogical approaches, Beyond Human participates in the ecocentric transformation of Hispanic cultural studies.

The English Reformation in the Spanish Imagination examines early modern Spanish literary works that represent English Catholics and figures from the English Reformation, including Henry and Elizabeth Tudor, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon, Sir Francis Drake, and Mary Stuart. Deborah R. Forteza compares these texts to assess how rhetorical and genre distinctions open and constrain the Spanish representations and how these exchanges inform Anglo-Spanish perceptions and relations. The book focuses on the literary representation of characters as classical and biblical monsters and saints and considers how these images were transformed and deployed in lesser-known poems, plays, and novels in order to capture the Spanish imagination. Through these sources, Forteza reveals the complex fraternal and antagonistic links between England and Spain, including Black Legend and Counter-Reformation exchanges. In examining the works that shaped Spain’s view of England at the time, The English Reformation in the Spanish Imagination demonstrates the importance of transnational study and why it is essential for a more nuanced understanding of Spanish literature.

Control and Resistance reveals the various ways in which food writing of the early Franco era was a potent political tool, producing ways of eating and thinking about food that privileged patriotism over personal desire. The author examines a diverse range of official and non-official food texts to highlight how discourse helped construct and contest identities in line with the three ideological pillars of the regime: autarky, prescriptive gender roles, and monolithic nationalism. Official food discourse produced an audience with a taste for local foodstuffs, and also created a unified gastronomic space in which regional cuisines were co-opted for the purposes of culinary nationalism. The author discusses a genre of official texts directed solely at women, which demanded women’s compliance and exclusive dedication to domesticity. Alongside such examples, Control and Resistance includes texts that offered resistance to the Franco hegemony. Food texts have traditionally been viewed as apolitical because of their connections with domesticity, so they were not subject to the same degree of censorship as other published works. Accordingly, food writing was at times more capable of offering disruptive or resistant textual spaces than other forms of discourse.