Pero Mexía and the otium of varied reading

Abstract

Abstract Otium(leisure), idleness (ociosidad) and labor (negocio/trabajo) are central categories in Pedro Mexía’s Silva de varia lección (1540), one of the most influential and popular miscellanea of the Early Modern Period, in Spain and Europe. In his work we see the breakdown of the opposition of ocio and negocio in the context of a new aristocratic ideology. Mexía’s reflections on leisure and intellectual labor shed new light on the nature of the mental sufferings of Cervantes’s Don Quijote, and contemporaries’ views of the hidalgo’s favorite pastime: reading.