King Of Spain Research Articles

Sexuality, Marriage and Women’s Life Narratives in Teresa Deevy’s: A Disciple (1931), The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935) and Katie Roche (1936)

Teresa Deevy (1894-1963) is an Irish playwright who has received increased critical attention in recent years. Deevy wrote some twenty-five plays between 1930 and 1958, and she can be positioned within the post-revolutionary trend of disillusionment articulated by Irish writers such as Frank O’Connor and Liam O’Flaherty. However, Deevy’s work deviates from these writers with her striking emphasis on women’s oppression within Irish society. This essay examines three of Deevy’s plays: A Disciple (1931), The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935) and Katie Roche (1936). These plays were challenging at a time when the state was rolling back on much of the emancipatory promise of the revolutionary period and when successive Pastoral Letters castigated the immodest behaviour of young Irish women. Of particular interest and note are Deevy’s stage directions, her use of naturalism and her representations of female sexuality. Through her plays, Teresa Deevy was highlighting the shadow side of state nationalism’s rural idylls and Arcadian visions.

El Libro de las dueñas y la Historia Troyana bilingüe (Santander, BMP, ms. 558). Palabras e imágenes para María Rosa Lida de Malkiel (1910-1962)

In her ground-breaking article on Alfonso X’s General Estoria, the Argentinian philologist María Rosa Lida de Malkiel alluded to a rubric found in several late manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César concerning a supposed codex offered by ‘the King of Spain’ to Charles V of France. According to her view, this lost work should be identified as a manuscript preserving the Trojan section of the Alfonsine compilation. This article takes her hypothesis as the start-point for a twofold enquiry. On the one hand, it aims at gathering some evidence of the existence of a lost Estoria de Troya, an illustrated manuscript preserving the account of the Trojan War and related mythological episodes that would had been commissioned by the Learned King before the General Estoria. On the other, this survey tries to track down the vanishing marks left by this missing manuscript that - presumably - went almost unnoticed at the Parisian court.

LOS MARAÑONES Y LA POLÉMICA DE LA CONQUISTA: RETÓRICA E IDEAS POLÍTICAS EN LA CARTA DE LOPE DE AGUIRRE A FELIPE II

During the summer of 1561 in Venezuela, the rebel Lope de Aguirre wrote several letters addressed to his political enemies on both sides of the Atlantic. The most important of these documents was the letter sent to Philip II, king of Spain. In this letter, Aguirre incorporated legal terminology while simultaneously adopting a burlesque and prophetic tone to effectively address the Spanish possession of America. Contrary to the predominant image of Aguirre as an irrational being in the documents and the historiography of that period, this paper shows the rhetorical logic of Aguirre´s famous letter. Therefore, the letter is best understood as an attempt to justify a political position.

Los propios y bienes de comunidad en la provincia de Tlaxcala durante la aplicación de las Reformas Borbónicas, 1787-1804

El artículo analiza a través de los bienes propios y de comunidad en la Provincia de Tlaxcala, cuál fue el impacto que en dicho patrimonio del cabildo indio y de los pueblos, respectivamente, tuvieron las Reformas Borbónicas impulsadas a fines del siglo XVIII por la Corona española. Cabe hacer notar que uno de los privilegios del Cabildo tlaxcalteca, otorgado por el Rey de España, era la pertenencia patrimonial de tierras y recursos en la provincia, argumento que se esgrimió con éxito para evitar la aplicación de los reglamentos de bienes de comunidad y propios.

Accounting history, a privileged way to approach historical research. An illustrative case

The international expansion of accounting history in the last fifteen or twenty years has really been impressive. It has reached a level that has opened a new stage of development, a stage that calls for a new conception of the discipline that lives up to the degree of maturity that it has reached. The new concept of accounting history has to view it not only as a study of the evolution of accounting and related matters, but as a privileged way to approach historical research as a whole. And that because all or almost all human activities have an economic aspect and therefore they need to keep accounts in one or other way.
 However most historical events, even the most important, have been described and interpreted without considering at all the possible existence of accounting registers related to them. Consequently there are thousands and thousands of account books and bundles of accounting records all over the world gathering the dust of ages, because they have been never touched by a historian's hand.
 Practically the only historians that base their researches on account books are the accounting historians. Thus most of them, when practising archival research, do not limit themselves to search for the evolution and changes of accounting theories, techniques or practices. They go far beyond and explore the events and operations recorded in the account books attempting to place them into the correct context in order to find out their historical significance.
 They have it quite clear. What really is missing in this context is a formal statement of the authentic nature of accounting history -a sub-discipline of economic history- as a very effective way to research not only into economic subjects, but into every subject trough the accounting documentation kept because of its economic facets.
 The formulation of this statement is the main purpose of the present paper. And it wants to make clear the new conception of accounting history through an illustrative case: the war held by Henry II, king of France, and the Pope Paul IV against Philip II, king of Spain, in the years 1556-1559.

The emperor's last campaign: a Napoleonic empire in America

Napoleon's last campaign didn't end at Waterloo. After that fateful day on June 1815, hundreds if not thousands of veterans of Napoleon's army emigrated to America. Many went farther south and joined the rebels fighting for independence in the Spanish colonies, from Mexico to Buenos Aires. Bonapartists roiled the Western World as they sought fortune, fame, and glory in the expanding United States and in the tumultuous Spanish Americas suffering from repression and civil disorder, and even in the states of Europe.Among them were Lord Thomas Cochrane, Sir Robert Wilson, Charles Lallemand, and Michel Brayer, some of the most interesting characters of the Napoleonic era. This is the first full-length examination of the Bonapartists who emigrated from France after Napoleon's defeat and exile, who formed a loose confederation with adventurers and romantics, and who contemplated a new empire in the Western Hemisphere. scheme had the support and encouragement of the fallen emperor himself and his brother Joseph, former King of Spain. Emilio Ocampo has examined archives on three continents and sources in several languages to ferret out the evidence - a monumental task considering that conspirators tried to leave no evidence of their plans, and that a failed plot, like failure in general, leaves few claimants.Ocampo reinterprets Latin American independence as an international event that drew in all the states of the Atlantic basin. By illuminating the complex connections between the shattered France of the Bourbon restoration; new radicals in a Britain inspired by the French Revolution; Napoleon in exile at St. Helena; the United States, where home-grown adventurers and French emigres alike saw opportunity; and, the collapsing Spanish colonial empire, where revolutionaries were allying themselves with the veterans of Napoleon's Grande Armee, Ocampo brings together two bodies of scholarship: Napoleonic history and Latin American independence. The Emperor's Last Campaign is a fascinating story, well told, and peopled with all sorts of improbable individuals and schemes that perhaps just missed coming to full fruition.

Death in El Dorado: The Anthropophagous Jungle in One Account of Lope de Aguirre's Revolt

DEATH IN EL DORADO: THE ANTHROPOPHAGOUS JUNGLE IN ONE ACCOUNT OF LOPE DE AGUIRRE’S REVOLT by Kimberly Borchard Randolph-Macon College I. OBJECTIVE THE trope of the jungle as an abyss where man is overwhelmed by the abundance of nature and slowly degenerates into a state of moral perversion is one of the hallmarks of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American literature . Critics have alternately praised the novela de la selva as a desperately needed critique of colonial exploitation and attacked it as the origin of an endless series of facile literary clichés. Though it is commonly accepted that the genre emerged as a retort to utopian discourses rooted in the ideology of colonial domination, many of its antecedents in early colonial letters have thus far been overlooked. In the present study, I will demonstrate that the motif of the anthropophagous tropical wilderness began to take form less than a century after Columbus’ arrival in the New World. This representation of nature as a hostile force came about in response to a specific set of politically volatile events, through a unique merging of techniques from distinct narrative traditions . In his Relación muy verdadera de todo lo sucedido en el río del Marañón (1561), Gonzalo de Zúñiga presents the Amazonian rainforest as an infernal morass, which empowers the evil and the corrupt as it devours the virtuous few.1 Zúñiga was not the first to depict the destructive potential of the American jungle. However, the personal interests at stake in his relación were great; 43 and his highly stylized portrayal of the rainforest is more complex than a strictly empirical nature report or relación. As he wrote, Zúñiga anticipated punishment by the colonial authorities for his involvement in an armed revolt against the king of Spain, Philip II. Accordingly, he used his topographical description of the Amazonian river valley as part of a broader justification of his apparently treasonous conduct.2 But unlike the typical author-narrator of New World relaciones – or the typical trial witness – Zúñiga conspicuously cancels himself out as an agent within his narrative. Though his report abounds in the “prosaic detail ” that most often provides the foundation of narrative authority in the relación de Indias (Mayer 101), Gonzalo de Zúñiga all but expunges his own presence from the text. While utilizing the framework of the New World nature report as the model for his self-exculpation, Zúñiga thus overturns two of the most discussed conventions of Spanish American colonial literature: the invocation of eyewitness authority and the supremacy of the first-person narrator. In this article, I will first consider the verbal map of the Marañón river with which Zúñiga begins his account. Studying Zúñiga’s use of empirical description as a rhetorical device, I will explore the significance of his topographical report in the broad context of New World relaciones in general, and in the narration of Aguirre’s rebellion in particular. In so doing, I hope to answer the following questions. How does this apparently disruptive digression help substantiate its author’s innocence? In what ways does it differ from previous verbal “images” of colonial American topography? Next, I will examine the author’s excision of himself from the events described in the Relación muy verdadera and his avoidance of the role of first-person eyewitness. Since the author’s function as eyewitness arguably constitutes the foundation of both geographic description and textual authority in early accounts of New World exploration , the rejection of eyewitness status constitutes a deviation from the narrative conventions of the time and potentially undermines Zúñiga’s authorial credibility. This leads us to the final issue to be addressed here. How does Zúñiga’s account fit into the larger tradition of Spanish New World nature reporting ? Does it represent a true anomaly, a new genre, or simply a variation on the prevalent literary forms of the sixteenth century? What is the place of this account in the canon of early New World letters? II. MAP OF AN INSURRECTION Against the backdrop of Spanish imperial expansion glorified by cronistas and cartographers alike...

Owning Art after Napoléon: Destiny or Destination at the Birth of the Museum

A set of major old-master paintings looted from Spanish Royal Collections, including important canvases by Velázquez (fig. 1), Correggio, and others, was discovered in Joseph Bonaparte's baggage, abandoned along with the rest of his property as he fled from the Battle of Vitoria, which ended his tumultuous five-year reign as king of Spain in 1813. Years later the duke of Wellington offered to return the collection to the restored monarch. But Ferdinand VII—who owed his throne to the duke's victories—refused to take it. What in its day would have been called the return to legitimacy, the restoration of the Bourbon line after the defeat of Napoléon, did not result in the restitution of Napoleonic loot. The works remain at Apsley House, the duke's home in London, where they have been on display in the Waterloo Gallery since 1819, a usurper's booty transformed by its history into an emblem of royal generosity, gratitude, and military prowess (fig. 2). The collection is now part of the museum officially established at the duke's residence in 1947, following another European military cataclysm in which Britain prevailed.

Governor and government in sixteenth-century Rome

L'importanza del governo a Roma e il ruolo del papa e dei suoi ufficiali in esso crebbero rapidamente nel corso del XVI secolo. Il presente articolo prende la figura del governatore della città come uncase-studye, usando dati legislativi, d'archivio e finanziari, ci si domanda come possiamo valutare quel processo e cosa rivela circa le aspirazioni dei Romani per il governo. Si conclude che questa espansione non fu il risultato di una centralizzazione deliberate o di una razionalizzazione dai papi del XVI secolo, ma che differenti gruppi all'interno della società romana sfruttarono l'idea di un'autorità papale per promuovere i loro propri interessi e incoraggiare la stabilità politica. Infine l'articolo prende in considerazione le conseguenze che questo ha avuto per lo sviluppo di Roma come una comunità politica, e si arguisce che nei secoli precedenti la rivoluzione francese, lungi dall'essere una causa di stagnazione e declino, il governo papale continuò ad evolversi per incontrare le aspettative maturate su di esso dalla societàdell'ancien régime.

FP20-TU-04 The neurological condition of Carlos II, King of Spain

FP20-TU-04 The neurological condition of Carlos II, King of Spain

The Diastolic Rhythm of the Gallery: Copies, Originals, and Reversed Canvases

As part of a larger project on reversed paintings, this paper looks at the powerfully reflexive motif of the reversed painting in paintings of art galleries (hereafter 'gallery paintings') over a period and space that extends from 1620s Antwerp through the post-Revolutionary Louvre to the present. A reversed painting (or 'back') is defined as a painting within a painting that is depicted from behind, of which the most famous example is probably in Diego Vel zquez's Las Meni as (1656). Victor I. Stoichita argued in The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting (1997) that the seventeenth-century 'gallery paintings' made famous by David Teniers were intended to serve as inventories of the collections they represent. In such works, our 'eyes are constantly ricocheting [across the walls of paintings] from one spot to another, unable to stop on any one thing. It is up to the spectator to construct, step by step, a combinatory technique, to establish bridges and correlations.' Although the meaning of such sequences are often obscure to modern interpreters, clues can be found in paintings that are out of sequence and that consequently serve as 'stop signals' in 'the inevitability of a regrouping': 'the one a connoisseur is contemplating, the one not yet hanging on the wall'. Some of these 'stop signals' include backs turned towards us while owners and connoisseurs discuss the fronts that are hidden to us. We see one in the bottom-right corner of the seventeenth-century Cabinet of Rubens, attributed to Willem van Herp. Also within this painting is an unfinished portrait of the then King of Spain, Philip IV, next to a table of painting utensils that remind us of 'the process by which all paintings are produced'. By depicting the unfinished front of the one and the back of the (presumably finished) other painting, the act of creating works in the studio is conflated with the act of appreciating them in the gallery, so as to draw these activities and locations into the same orbit of activity.

Jodenhoeks: The Amsterdam Jewish Dialect and Its Influence upon the Dutch Language

Until 1940 Amsterdam had a significant and largely lower-class Jewish population. The Yiddish and Portuguese languages of this community melted with Dutch and immigrant influences into a specific Amsterdam Jewish dialect. This idiom had a considerable influence on the Dutch language, especially after the death of its speakers during World War Two. Amsterdam and the Immigrant 'Nations9 The Protestants took over the government of Amsterdam on 26 May 1578. That day the old Catholic city government was put on a boat that sailed out of town. Instead of being executed, the Catholic burgomasters were put ashore less than a mile outside the city walls. A new government was installed with a majority of Dutch-Reformed members. No-one was injured or killed during the Alteratie ('Alteration'). Not only was the style of this revolution typical, but also the time: at least ten years after the start of the Dutch revolt against the Catholic Habsburg king of Spain. All those years it had been more profitable for the Amsterdam burghers to sell goods to the Spanish armies before they attacked rebellious cities nearby. But now, with the Northern part of the Low Countries in the hands of the rebels, competing harbours were threatening to take over Amsterdam trade. This matter-of-fact, businesslike way of looking at things probably helped Jewish and other immigrants to feel at home. The Spanish and Portuguese new Christians arriving from Antwerp, Southern France or the Iberian peninsula formed just one of many immigrant groups moving to a booming port city. It was during the late sixteenth century that this sleepy fishing village turned into one of the most important harbours in the world. Some immigrant groups * Justus van de Kamp (born Amsterdam, 1954) is a historian and lexicographer who teaches HOVO courses in history of Yiddish literature at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. With Jacob van der Wijk he published an 800-page dictionary of Jewish words in the Dutch language 'Koosjer Nederlands' that was highly acclaimed in the Dutch media. European Judaism Volume 42, Number 2, Autumn 2009: 34-46 doi: 1 0.3 1 67/ej. 2009.420206 ISSN 0014-3006 (Print), ISSN 1752-2323 (Online) This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Mon, 08 Aug 2016 05:33:53 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Don Diego Luis Moctezuma, nieto de <i>Hueytlatoani</i>, padre de conde: un noble indígena entre dos mundos

El presente trabajo pretende mostrar la actuación y desempeño de don Diego Luis Moctezuma Ilhuitltemoctzin, nieto del hueytlatoani Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, hijo de don Pedro Moctezuma Tlacahuepantzin y padre de don Pedro Tesifón Moctezuma, primer conde de Moctezuma y vizconde de Ilucan. Don Diego Luis Moctezuma desempeñó un papel importante durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVI y primeros años del XVII, primero como hijo de don Pedro Moctezuma, quien lo envía a la Corte y Reino de Castilla a defender ante el rey de España y el Consejo de Indias sus intereses como heredero legítimo de Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Posteriormente, cuando don Diego Luis se convierte en sucesor de su hermano don Martín Cortés Moctezuma se ve afectado por la política de la Corona y el Consejo de Indias de debilitamiento sistemático de la nobleza indígena. Su salida de la Nueva España y las promesas incumplidas por parte de la Corona determinan la política de Felipe II y Felipe III con los herederos de Moctezuma Xocoyotzin.

Don Diego Luis Moctezuma, nieto de <i>Hueytlatoani</i>, padre de conde: un noble indígena entre dos mundos

The present work tries to explain the proceeding and discharge of don Diego Luis Moctezuma Ilhuitltemoctzin, grandson of the hueytlatoani Moctezuma Xocoyotzin, son of don Pedro Moctezuma Tlacahuepantzin and father of don Pedro Tesifón Moctezuma, the first Count of Moctezuma and Vizconde de Ilucan. Don Diego Luis Moctezuma played an important role during the second half of the 16th century and the first years of the XVIIth, first as son of don Pedro Moctezuma, who sends it to the Court and Kingdom of Castile to defending before the King of Spain and the Council of The Indies his interests as legitimate inheritor of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Later, when don Diego Luis converted into successor of his brother don Martin Cortés Moctezuma, one sees affected by the politics of the Crown and the Council of The Indies of systematic weakening of the indigenous nobility. His departure of the New Spain and the promises broken by part of the Crown determine the politics of Philip II and Philip III with the inheritors of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin.

Wordsworth's Financial Sublime: Money and Meaning in Book VII of The Prelude

on the eighth of September, 1802, Charles Lamb, well pleased that William Wordsworth and his companions were visiting in London, wrote letter to Samuel Coleridge, saying: They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!1 Lamb's exclamation mark is surely more than enthusiastic ornamentation, for how astonishing it is to imagine the poet of Ye prescenses of nature, in the sky / on the earth, ye visons of the hills / and souls of lonely places2 among [s]uch place, such men, such language and such ware3 as Bartholomew Fair, watching a juggler with well-educated ape to come over the chain for the King of England and back again for the Prince, and sit still on his arse for the Pope and the King of Spain!4 Regardless of the stretch of imagination required, such rowdy environment is certainly what Wordsworth encountered in the fair of 1 802, as well as at his earlier visit in 1 795. In fact, as Jonathan Haynes has pointed out, Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, often revived both before the opening and after the closing of the fair at Smithfield, played major role in shaping Londoners' conceptions of the fair, serving as an exemplary model for fairgoers: model of the proper structure of perception, moral relation to experience, and social relation to community model called for by the Fair in particular but of course relevant to life in general.5 If he followed Jonson's model for perception, the fair Wordsworth would have been confronted with would have been one in which all things are for sale. At Jonson's fair, anything and anyone can become commodity; from wives to words, everything has its price. Critics have long noted that Jonson's play confronts the beginnings of England's transition into capitalist economy. I shall argue that Wordsworth's account of London and the fair in Book Seven of The Prelude confronts the latter stages of this same transition, transforming the sense of fluidity inherent in the frenzied buying and selling of commodity culture into what can best be described as the financial sublime. It is common, and often very fruitful, to read Romantic poetry in light of the industrial revolution that was well underway by the time of Wordsworth's birth, but arguably more relevant to Book Seven is the commercial revolution that paved the way for such innovation in

Los negocios de Luis XIV en Madrid: la acción de sus embajadores en la corte madrileña

Entre 1660 y 1700 Luis XIV envió 24 representantes acreditados ante el rey católico, de los cuales 7 pueden considerarse embajadores residentes aunque ninguno de ellos permaneció allí más de seis años. Aunque éste no fue el único asunto que trataron allí, todos compartieron en mayor o menor grado una misma expectativa, que el rey de España muriera sin heredero legítimo, y una misma esperanza: que la corona española recayera en un candidato Borbón. A ello se refería la mayor parte de la información que sus enviados a la corte madrileña debían captar y enviar. Por ello éstos tuvieron que empeñarse en trabajar para convencer a los subditos del monarca católico de apoyar, o de no oponerse, a que Luis XIV, el Delfín o Felipe de Anjou heredaran el trono hispano de los Habsburgo. Sus negociaciones estuvieron en gran parte encaminadas al mismo fin: incorporar la corona española sin lucha.

The Gendered Identities of the ‘Lieutenant Nun’: Rethinking the Story of a Female Warrior in Early Modern Spain

This article analyses the story of Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish nun, who escaped from a convent at the beginning of the seventeenth century to begin a new life as a military warrior serving under the King of Spain in colonial Latin America. Her story reveals that notions of sex and gender at the time were surprisingly elastic and flexible, and often more associated with acts and behaviour than with physical bodies. By examining how the personage of the Lieutenant Nun has been treated in Spain and in Britain in the nineteenth century, this article also evaluates the extent to which certain pre‐modern ideas about sex and gender continued to survive two centuries later.

The Birth of the Most Important 18th Century Dental Text: Pierre Fauchard’s Le Chirurgien Dentist

Pierre Fauchard (1678-1761) is considered the father of modern dentistry. His seminal book, Le Chirurgien Dentiste, ou Traité des Dents (1728), is the discipline's first complete work. During the five years preceding its publication (1723-1728), Pierre Fauchard sought the opinions, contributions, and "approbation" (approval) of 19 of his colleagues: six physicians, 12 surgeons, and one dentist. The first and most important contributor to the manuscript was Jean Devaux, surgeon and mentor to Fauchard. The next six reviewers were illustrious physicians and scientists of the time: Philippe Hecquet, Jean-Claude Adrien Helvetius, Jean Baptiste Silva, Antoine DeJussieu, Raymond Jacob Finot, and Antoine Benignus Winslow. The subsequent 12 reviewers were all sworn-surgeons (certified by St. Côme), including a lone dentist, Laudumiey, surgeon-dentist to His Majesty, Philip V, King of Spain. Fauchard knew that for dentistry to be regarded as a learned profession, and perhaps for Fauchard to be recognized as its leader, he needed the support and approval of the establishment before publishing his book. This is an account of how he attained this endorsement.

Que “en tantos cuerpos vive repetido”: Lope de Vega

Research Article| January 01 2007 Que “en tantos cuerpos vive repetido”: Lope de Vega Antonio Carreño Antonio Carreño Brown University Antonio Carreño, from Spain, received his Ph.D. from Yale University and taught at Yale, Columbia, and the University of Illinois before moving to Brown University where he holds the W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professorship in the Humanities. A specialist in 16th-and 17th-century Spanish Literature with an emphasis on Golden Age Poetry and the comedia, Professor Carreño has published extensively in these areas and on contemporary Spanish poetry: La dialéctica de la identidad en la poesía contemporánea, El romancero lírico de Lope de Vega, as well as editions of many Golden Age works and over one-hundred essays. Professor Carreño has received numerous fellowships (Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society), as well as awards and recognitions: The Ramón Menéndez Pidal Prize by the Spanish Royal Academy and the Encomienda de la Orden Isabel la Católica, which was conferred in 1998 by the King of Spain. antonio_carreno@brown.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Calíope (2007) 13 (1): 93–113. https://doi.org/10.5325/caliope.13.1.0093 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Antonio Carreño; Que “en tantos cuerpos vive repetido”: Lope de Vega. Calíope 1 January 2007; 13 (1): 93–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/caliope.13.1.0093 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressCalíope Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University2007The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Polished Cornerstone of the Temple: Queenly Libraries of the Enlightenment (review)

Reviewed by: The Polished Cornerstone of the Temple: Queenly Libraries of the Enlightenment Isabel Bernal Martinez The Polished Cornerstone of the Temple: Queenly Libraries of the Enlightenment. By María Luisa López-Vidriero . London: British Library, 2005. xvi, 83 pp. £16. ISBN 0-7123-4907-3. This book is a beautiful edition of the lectures that María Luisa López-Vidriero, director of the Royal Library in Madrid, Spain, delivered within the framework of the renowned Panizzi bibliographical lectures in the British Library in 2004. The suggestive title encloses a dense piece of work that revolves around a much-researched [End Page 87] topic by the author, namely, the book culture in the court setting of the eighteenth century, especially royal and princely libraries. The outcome is remarkable considering the space constraints derived from the very nature of the book. The explicit objective of the study, that is, to demonstrate that eighteenth-century court book collections reflected a standardization induced by French cultural supremacy and served as a behavior model for their societies, is achieved by comparing two queenly libraries of the time. Besides analyzing them as closely intertwined with cultural dynamics and political practices, the author adopts a gender approach by offering insightful glimpses of Enlightenment thinking on female education initiatives and women's reaction to them. Indeed, the Enlightenment gave way to an intensification of querelles des femmes, namely, mostly male-driven debates on the nature of women and their presumed role in society. Education was viewed as the most effective way to enable women to fulfill their social task properly. Male reading supervision based on ad hoc manuals, bibliographies, and guides proved to be the preferred tool for female "self-education." So successful was this activity that it ended up becoming the means of a quiet cultural revolution that would preannounce an early feminist agenda and whose ultimate consequence would be the systematic education and training of women. In parallel, the phenomenon of salonnières, educated women who organized intellectual and social gatherings at their homes, was but another way women expressed their educational needs and aspirations in the eighteenth century. Needless to say, women from the court and the bourgeoisie were the first to profit from the slow, albeit unstoppable, changes that the new age triggered, as the protagonists of this book show. Using the hypotheses that private libraries of royalty were exemplary in nature, López-Vidriero conducts a comparative analysis of five court book collections. However, at the forefront of this study are the private libraries of two contemporary queens who represented diverse political and religious contexts as well as different educational backgrounds, namely, Caroline of Ansbach (1638–1727), wife of George II, king of England, and Elizabeth Farnese (1692–1766), wife of Philip V, king of Spain. This fresh methodology yields interesting results as far as pure librarianship, historical interpretation, and gender matters are concerned. Rather than providing an intimate history approach, the author examines whether a functioning pattern of book culture existed across representative collections. In fact, in their attempts to educate "the fair sex," Enlightenment intellectuals saw queens as model reading figures who could exert a powerful influence on the reading habits of women. Simultaneously, beyond pure gender objectives, queenly libraries functioned as symbolic instruments that built upon national features, thus fostering state propaganda and underpinning royal authority—two dimensions that are also addressed as deeply as the format of the text allows. The Enlightenment developed within the framework of the highly centralized and absolutist ancien régime, which initially made use of the cultural, scientific, and intellectual novelties in order to carry out reforms by authoritarian means. As a result, the eighteenth century saw the emergence of the so-called enlightened monarchs who ruled their people with an iron fist for their own best interests. In this light, court libraries played a role in setting educational standards and in echoing the political establishment, as the queenly libraries of this book reflect. However, interestingly enough, a close look into the holdings of these collections [End Page 88] captures the inner contradictions and pressing forces of the time, exemplified by the presence of "prohibited books" in all these private collections...