1st Edition

Soundscapes of the Early Modern Hispanophone and Lusophone Worlds

Edited By Víctor Sierra Matute Copyright 2025
336 Pages 23 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

336 Pages 23 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

336 Pages 23 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book is an interdisciplinary edited collection that seeks to recognize the radical importance of sound, and center it in discussions in the field of early modern studies.   Bringing together a collection of case studies related spatially and temporally to specific places or events, the volume explores a gallery of soundscapes mapping the early modern Iberian empires. This... Read more

Part 1: Creole Aurality

1.      “Hearing and Seeing Indigenous Presence in a Colonial Mexican Church (Tecamachalco, 1562)”

Savannah Esquivel

2.      “Resounding Failures in Colonial Lima: Bellaquería in the Travails of María Pizarro (1568) and Francisco de la Cruz (1578)”

Nicole D. Legnani

3.      “Religious Soundscapes: Jesuit Missionary Encounters with the Tupi in Sixteenth-Century Brazil”

Jessica Rutherford

4.      “Harmonizing the Four Corners of the World: The Soundscape of Late Early Modern Manila”

Pedro Luengo

 

Part 2: Hearing the Cityscape

 

5.      “Sound and Power in Early Modern Alcalá de Henares”

Carlos Roberto Ramírez

6.      “Towards the Soundscape of a Developing Azorean Port-town in the Late Sixteenth Century: Angra (Terceira Island) in the 1590s”

Luís Henriques

7.      “A la usanza romana: Spanish Poetry and alla spagnola Music in Early Modern Rome (1624)”

Sebastián León

8.      “The Sound of Arcadia: The Aural Regime of Lope de Vega’s Pastoral”

Lorena Uribe Bracho

 

Part 3: Spectacular Sonic Environments

 

9.      “‘Vuelva el aire / los repetidos acentos’: Seville’s Sonic Reverberations and the Ontology of Silence in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s El médico de su honra

Alani Hicks-Bartlett

10.  “The Siren’s Song: Sounds of Resistance in a Neapolitan dramma musicale

Mary B. Quinn

11.  “Towards a Proper Way of Being: Embedded Sounds and Civilized Words in Puebla’s Festivals (1730, 1753, 1768)”

Amelia R. Mañas

12.  “Sounds of Modernity in Cervantes’s Barcelona”

Esther Fernández

 

Part 4: Vibrant Beings

 

13.  “Soundscapes of the Self (Salamanca, 1554)”

Simone Pinet

14.  “Between the Wall and the Pulpit: Soundscapes of Baroque Preaching in Palma de Mallorca (1647)”

Juan Vitulli

15.  “Captive Listeners: Antonio de Sosa’s Topographia as Acoustic Ethnography of Early Modern Algiers”

Paul Michael Johnson

16.  “Hearing Alcuzcuz: Word Play and the Production of Uncertainty in Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s Amar después de la muerte

Erica Feild-Marchello

 

Part Five: Transoceanic Sound

 

17.  “Global Soundscapes from the First Voyage of Circumnavigation, 1519-1522”

David R. M. Irving

 

Biography

Víctor Sierra Matute is Assistant Professor at Baruch College (CUNY). His research interests include material culture, affect theory, transoceanic studies, and the history of the senses and emotions. His research has appeared in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Romanic Review, Romance Studies, and the Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies.