Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200–1750 ed. by Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200–1750 ed. by Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal Jean Dangler Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal, editors. Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200–1750. u of toronto p, 2018. 360 pp. this ambitious volume aims to shed light on the representation of the nonvisual senses, a theme rarely broached in the field of nonmodern Iberian studies, despite recent scholarship on sight and the emotions, or what the editors Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal call the "sensory turn" (4) in the humanities and social sciences. This less trodden path of the other four senses constitutes fertile ground for exploration, particularly given the different roles that senses such as smell or sound played in the shifting sociohistoric circumstances covered by the book's more than five-hundred-year timeframe. The volume greatly illuminates the varying roles of the nonvisual senses, especially olfaction and touch. The book is divided into five parts, arranged by theme: part 1, "Sensing Religion," begins the volume with two essays on medieval literature by Giles ("The Breath of Lazarus in the Mocedades de Rodrigo") and Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira ("Sabrosa olor: The Role of Olfaction and Smells in Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Señora"); part 2, "Cognition and the Senses," comprises three essays by Julia Domínguez ("The Internal Senses in Don Quixote and the Anatomy of Memory"), Robert K. Fritz ("Taste, Cognition, and Redemption in Guzmán de Alfarache"), and Wagschal ("The Aesthetics of Disgust in Miguel de Cervantes and Maria de Zayas"); part 3, "Perception," offers three articles by E. Michael Gerli ("Sight, Sound, Scent, and Sense: Reading the Cancionero de Palacio"), Carolyn A. Nadeau ("Treating Sensory Ailments in Early Modern Domestic Literature"), and Charles Victor Ganelin ("Cervantes's Exemplary Sensorium, or the Skinny on La española inglesa"); part 4, "Sensing Empire," encompasses four contributions by Emily C. Francomano ("The Senses of Empire and the Scents of Babylon in the Libro de Alexandre"), Josiah Blackmore ("Portuguese Scenes of the Senses, Medieval and Early Modern"), [End Page 277] Henry Berlin ("Eucharistic Thought and Imperial Longing in Portugal from Amadeus da Silva's Apocalypsis Nova [1502] to Antonio Vieira's História do Futuro [1663–1667]"), and Lisa Voigt ("Festive Soundscapes in Colonial Potosí and Minas Gerais"); and part 5, "Sensing the Urban," contains two essays by Frederick A. De Armas ("Celestial Visions and Demonic Touch: García's Inventions in La verdad sospechosa") and Enrique García Santo-Tomás ("Motherhood Interrupted: Sensing Birth in Early Modern Spanish Literature"). Most of the contributors are renowned scholars whose essays offer useful and compelling insights into their respective topics. One of the volume's stated goals is to directly contribute to the field of Iberian studies, broadly characterized by relationships between diverse linguistic, geopolitical, and social groups (4). However, the absence of explicit work on a wide range of languages and cultures—such as the Andalusi milieu, Iberian Jewish writers, and literature in Catalan, which was so impressively prolific in manuscripts and in print through the sixteenth century—is notable. Along with the volume's chief focus on texts in Castilian, two essays examine literature in Portuguese and one takes up colonial contexts at Potosí and Minas Gerais. The editors offer little explanation about their reasoning for the volume's temporal bookmarks of 1200 and 1750. They briefly survey the historical trajectory of thought on the senses from Plato and Aristotle to humoral theory and sixteenth-century ideas that resonate with elements of cognitive studies today (4–5), although the concise review does not clarify the reasons behind the chosen timeframe. It would be useful to know why and how the dates and materials were selected, since only three essays (Giles, Rodriguez-Pereira, and Francomano) and part of a fourth (Blackmore) pertain to materials prior to approximately 1450. Furthermore, the editors do not elucidate why two of the three medieval offerings (Giles and Rodriguez-Pereira) narrowly focus on religion, a qualification that seems, however inadvertently, to initially delimit and reduce the senses in medieval studies to a faith-based, Christian classification and portrayal. There are many...