Golden Age Of Spain

A sumptuous history of Golden Age Spain that explores the irresistible tension between heavenly and earthly realms. Incomparable Realms offers a vision of Spanish culture and society during the so-called Golden Age, the period from 1500 to 1700 when Spain unexpectedly rose to become the dominant European power. But in what ways was this a Golden Age, and for whom? The relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church shaped the period, with both constructing narratives to bind Spanish society together. Incomparable Realms unpicks the impact of these two historical forces on thought and culture and examines the people and perspectives such powerful projections sought to eradicate. The book shows that the tension between the heavenly and earthly realms, and in particular the struggle between the spiritual and the corporeal, defines Golden Age culture. In art and literature, mystical theology and moral polemic, ideology, doctrine, and everyday life, the problematic pull of the body and the material world is the unacknowledged force behind early modern Spain. Life is a dream, as the title of Calderón’s famous play of the period proclaimed, but there is always a body dreaming it.

A book about life in Spain from the succession of Philip II (1556) to the death of Philip IV (1665). The author relies primarily upon careful use of literary works and travel accounts written during this 'golden age'. In addition to delightful descriptions and anecdotes, he has woven into his text important political and economic developments. He provides a general view of Spain, stressing the importance of the Catholic faith and the emphasis upon personal honour, before surveying life and society in urban and rural areas. He then examines in some detail life in the Church, university, military and home; public entertainment; and the picaresque life.

The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain explores the practice of sacramental confession in Spain between roughly 1500 and 1700. One of the most significant points of contact between the laity and ecclesiastical hierarchy, confession lay at the heart of attempts to bring religious reformation to bear upon the lives of early modern Spaniards. Rigid episcopal legislation, royal decrees, and a barrage of prescriptive literature lead many scholars to construct the sacrament fundamentally as an instrument of social control foisted upon powerless laypeople. Drawing upon a wide range of early printed and archival materials, this book considers confession as both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. Rather than relying solely upon prescriptive and didactic literature, it considers evidence that describes how the people of early modern Spain experienced confession, offering a rich portrayal of a critical and remarkably popular component of early modern religiosity.

This is the first monograph on the performance and reception of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century national drama in contemporary Spain, which attempts to remedy the traditional absence of performance-based approaches in Golden Age studies. The book contextualises the socio-historical background to the modern-day performance of the country’s three major Spanish baroque playwrights (Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina), whilst also providing detailed aesthetic analyses of individual stage and screen adaptations.

Taking up the invitation extended by tentative attempts over the past three decades to construct a functioning definition of the genre, Jonathan Bradbury traces the development of the vernacular miscellany in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Spanish-America. In the first full-length study of this commercially successful and intellectually significant genre, Bradbury underlines the service performed by the miscellanists as disseminators of knowledge and information to a popular readership. His comprehensive analysis of the miscelánea corrects long-standing misconceptions, starting from its poorly-understood terminology, and erects divisions between it and other related genres. His work illuminates the relationship between the Golden Age Spanish miscellany and those of the classical world and humanist milieu, and illustrates how the vernacular tradition moved away from these forebears. Bradbury examines in particular the later inclusion of explicitly fictional components, such as poetic compositions and short prose fiction, alongside the vulgarisation of erudite or inaccessible prose material, which was the primary function of the earlier Spanish miscellanies. He tackles the flexibility of the miscelánea as a genre by assessing the conceptual, thematic and formal aspects of such works, and exploring the interaction of these features. As a result, a genre model emerges, through which Golden Age works with fragmentary and non-continuous contents can better be interpreted and classified.

Spain’s Golden Age may be defined as the extraordinary moment when the visual arts, architecture, literature, and music all reached unprecedented heights. Featuring a diverse selection of more than 100 outstanding works produced by leading artists from Spain and its global territories, Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain is the first exhibition in the United States to expand the notion of the “Golden Age” to include the Hispanic world beyond the shores of the Iberian Peninsula. Such far-flung Spanish-controlled centers as Antwerp, Naples, Mexico, Lima, and the Philippines are represented by paintings, sculpture and decorative arts of astounding quality and variety from the pivotal years of about 1600 to 1750. Artists featured in the exhibition include Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, El Greco, Juan de Valdés Leal, Juan Sánchez Cotán, and many more. This exhibition also marks the first time since the 1935 exhibition for the California Pacific International Exposition that all five of the Spanish masters represented on the Museum’s building façade—Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, Ribera and El Greco—will be shown together at the Museum. Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain is organized into four sections including The Courtly Image: Portraiture in the Hispanic World; The Rise of Naturalism; Art in the Service of Faith; and Splendors of Daily Life and Global Materials, and represent more than 10 countries, including Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. There will also be a wide variety of public programming to complement the show, including a symposium featuring notable scholars from around the world, a lecture by Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, London, as well as a film series, textile and cochineal dye workshops, performances by the San Diego Ballet, a Spanish jazz band, traditional Flamenco performances, community and outreach programs, and much more.--from Exhibition's website