1st Edition

Experiencing Time in the Early Modern Hispanic World After Apocalypse

By Ariadna García-Bryce Copyright 2023
    192 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book considers the new ways time was experienced in the sixteenth- and seventeeth-century Hispanic world in the framework of global Catholicism. It underscores the crucial role that the imitation of Christ plays in modeling how representative writers physically and mentally interiorize temporal impermanence as the Messiah’s suffering body becomes a paradigmatic as well as malleable marker of the avatars of earthly history. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which authors adapt Christ-centered conceptions of existence to accommodate both a volatile post-eschatological world and the increased dominance of mechanical clock time. As novel means of communing with Christ emerge, so too do new modes of sensing and understanding time, unleashing unprecedented cultural and literary reinvention. This is demonstrated through close analyses of writings by such influential figures as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Teresa of Ávila, Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

    Acknowledgments

    INTRODUCTION: TIME IN EARLY MODERNITY

    "Scattered in Times"

    Time as Scythe

    Chronos Resurrected

    Chapter Overview

    CHAPTER ONE:

    Embracing Clock Time in Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises

    Scheduled Devotion

    Transcending Vanitas

    Augustine: Time as a Problem

    Achieving Duration

    The Presence of Memory

    CHAPTER TWO:

    TIME TROUBLES IN TERESA OF ÁVILA’S LIBRO DE LA VIDA

    "We are not angels"

    Alumbradismo as Rejection of Time

    Schooling Memory

    The Time which is not One: Lux et Brevitas

    CHAPTER THREE:

    PIOUS SUBJECTS FOR A POST-MILLENARIAN NEW SPAIN

    The Imperfect Conquest of Time

    Mendieta’s Historia eclesiástica indiana: The End of Kairos

    Gregorio López: Seizing Timelessness

    Temporalizing the Life of Gregorio López

    CHAPTER FOUR:

    A NEW NEW JERUSALEM: SIGÜENZA Y GÓNGORA’S PARAÍSO OCCIDENTAL

    Resignifying Baroque Space

    The City as a Place of Memory

    The Christic Bodies of the Patria

    CHAPTER FIVE:

    REDEEMED TEMPORALITY: THE INFINITE SELF IN SOR JUANA’S "PRIMERO SUEÑO"

    Dreaming Wonder

    The Permanence of Change

    Resisting Allegory

    Awakening

    Solar Time

    EPILOGUE

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    INDEX

    Biography

    Ariadna García-Bryce earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale a PhD in Spanish Literature from Princeton. Her publications, which include Transcending Textuality: Quevedo and Political Authority in the Age of Print (2011) and many articles published in distinguished peer-reviewed journals (e.g. Renaissance Studies, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Hispanic Review), have focused on a variety of topics within early modern Hispanism: the relationship between drama, religion, and painting; rhetoric and poetics; modern appropriations of Baroque aesthetics; gender representation; the connection between literary culture and incipient bureaucratization.