Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T08:38:20.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fortunes of the Occhiali Politici in Early Modern Spain: Optics, Vision, Points of View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Enrique García Santo-Tomás
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Popularized in Spain through the work of the Italian satirist Traiano Boccalini, the motif of the occhiali politici, or political lenses, is one of the most understudied conceits in early modern Spanish satire. This essay examines four early modern Spanish texts where anteojos de larga vista (“eyeglasses” or “telescopes”) become central elements as the eye is given the ability to perceive the reality beyond deceptive appearances. But a capacity to see beyond reveals two parallel concerns: the adoption of spectacles as a mark of social distinction by a society suffering from the moral blindness these novels denounce and the increasing tensions between astronomy and religion stemming from the use of lenses as stargazing tools. Contextualizing these anxieties in the contemporary polemics regarding the divulgation of Galileo's Copernican theses, I illustrate how a simple corrective instrument triggered a fierce debate at the center of Spain's uneven modernity.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 59 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Álvarez de Miranda, Pedro. “Algo más sobre anteojo/antojo.” Boletín de la Real Academia Española 72.255 (1992): 63–66. Print.Google Scholar
Andrea, Battistini. “The Telescope in the Baroque Imagination.” Reason and Its Others: Italy, Spain, and the New World. Ed. Castillo, David R. and Lollini, Massimo. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2006. 3–38. Print.Google Scholar
Beltrán Marí, Antonio. Talento y poder. Historia de las relaciones entre Galileo y la Iglesia católica. Pamplona: Laetoli, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Blanco, Mercedes. “Del Infierno al Parnaso. Escepticismo y sátira política en Quevedo y Trajano Boccalini.” La Perinola. Revista de investigación quevediana 2 (1998): 155–94. Print.Google Scholar
Blumenberg, Hans. The Genesis of the Copernican World. Trans. Robert M. Wallace. Cambridge: MIT P, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Boccalini, Traiano. Advices from Parnassus. By Trajano Boccalini. Translated from the Italian. With Observations, Reflections, and Notes. By a Friend to Menante. London: L. Stokoe, 1727. Print.Google Scholar
Buci-Glucksmann, Christine. La folie du voir: De l'esthétique baroque. Paris: Galilée, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Cacho, Rodrigo. “La sátira en el Siglo de Oro: Notas sobre un concepto controvertido.” Neophilologus 88.1 (2004): 61–72. Print.Google Scholar
Castillo, David R. (A)Wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Dávila y Heredia, Andrés. Tienda de anteojos políticos. Valencia: Jerónimo de Villa, 1673. Print.Google Scholar
Daza de Valdés, Benito. El libro del uso de los antojos. Ed. Márquez, Manuel. Madrid: Imprenta de Cosano, 1923. Print. Biblioteca Clásica de la Medicina Española 4.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Trans. Tom Conley. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Diksterhuis, Eduard Jan. The Mechanization of the World Picture. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961. Print.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Elliott, John H. Imperial Spain, 1469–1716. London: Penguin, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Etreros, Mercedes. La sátira política en el siglo XVII. Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Fernández de Ribera, Rodrigo. Los anteojos de mejor vista. El mesón del mundo. Ed. de Miguel, Víctor Infantes. Madrid: Legasa, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
García Santo-Tomás, Enrique. “Artes de la ciudad, ciudad de las artes: La invención de Madrid en El Diablo Cojuelo.” Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos 25.1 (2000): 117–35. Print.Google Scholar
Glenn, Richard F. “The Optics of Illusion: Considerations of Fernández de Ribera's Los anteojos de mejor vista.” Studies in Honor of Everett W. Hesse. Ed. McCrary, William C. and Madrigal, José A. Lincoln: Soc. of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1981. 123–33. Print.Google Scholar
Gómez-Centurión Jiménez, Carlos María. “La sátira política durante el reinado de Carlos II.” Cuadernos de historia moderna y contemporánea 4 (1983): 11–34. Print.Google Scholar
González-Cano, Agustín. “Eye Gymnastics and a Negative Opinion on Eyeglasses in the Libro del exercicio by the Spanish Renaissance Physician Cristóbal Méndez.” Atti della Fondazione Giorgio Ronchi 49 (2004): 559–63. Print.Google Scholar
Baltasar, Gracián. El Criticón. Primera parte en la primavera de la niñez y en el estio de la juventud. Zaragoza: Nogués, 1651.Google Scholar
Green, Otis H. Spain and the Western Tradition: The Castilian Mind in Literature from El Cid to Calderón. 4 vols. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1963–66. Print.Google Scholar
Haney, Robert Warren. “The Prose Satires of Rodrigo Fernández de Ribera.” Diss. U of Kentucky, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Harries, Karsten. Infinity and Perspective. Cambridge: MIT P, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iffland, James. Quevedo and the Grotesque. 2 vols. London: Tamesis, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Ilardi, Vincent. Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. Philadelphia: Amer. Philos. Soc., 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1957. Print.Google Scholar
Levisi, Margarita. “Hieronymus Bosch y los Sueños de Francisco de Quevedo.” Filología 9 (1963): 163–200. Print.Google Scholar
Levisi, Margarita. “Los aspectos teatrales de El Diablo Cojuelo.” Antigüedad y actualidad de Luis Vélez de Guevara: Estudios críticos. Ed. Peale, C. George et al. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1983. 207–18. Print.Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
López Piñero, José María. Ciencia y técnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII. Barcelona: Labor Universitaria, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
Maravall, José Antonio. Antiguos y modernos. Madrid: Alianza, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Martinengo, Alessandro. La astrología en la obra de Quevedo: Una clave de lectura. Pamplona: U de Navarra, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Martín Vega, Arturo. La obra narrativa de Andrés Dávila y Heredia. Madrid: U Complutense, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Mazzotta, Giuseppe. Cosmopoiesis: The Renaissance Experiment. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peale, C. George. La anatomía de El Diablo Cojuelo. Deslindes de un género anatomístico. Chapel Hill: Dept. of Romance Langs., U of North Carolina, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
Pérez de Sousa, Fernando. Avisos de Parnaso de Traiano Bocalini; primera, y segunda centuria; Traducidos de lengua Toscana en Española por Fernando Perez de Sousa. Madrid: Diego Díaz de la Carrera, 1653. Print.Google Scholar
Pérez Lasheras, Antonio. Fustigat mores: Hacia el concepto de la sátira en el siglo XVII. Zaragoza: U de Zaragoza, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Pérez Magallón, Jesús. Construyendo la modernidad. La cultura española en el tiempo de los novatores (1675–1725). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Quevedo, Francisco de. La Hora de todos y la Fortuna con seso. Ed. Bourg, Jean, Dupont, Pierre, and Geneste, Pierre. Madrid: Cátedra, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Eileen, Reeves. Galileo's Glassworks. The Telescope and the Mirror. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Reiss, Timothy J. The Discourse of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Rico, Francisco. El pequeño mundo del hombre. Varia fortuna de una idea en la cultura española. Barcelona: Destino, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
R. de la Flor, Fernando. “Trampantojos.” Pasiones frías. Secreto y disimulación en el barroco hispano. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2005. 279–86. Print.Google Scholar
Romero-González, Antonio Félix. “La sátira menipea en España: 1600–1699.” Diss. Stony Brook U, State U of New York, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Salas, Xavier de. El Bosco en la literatura española. Barcelona: J. Sabater, 1943.Google Scholar
Schwartz-Lerner, Lía. “Golden Age Satire: Transformations of Genre.” MLN 105 (1990): 260–82. Print.Google Scholar
Carlos, Vaíllo, and Valdés, Ramón, eds. Estudios sobre la sátira española en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid: Castalia, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Valdés, Ramón. Introduction. Vélez de Guevara xxix–lxxxi.Google Scholar
Vélez de Guevara, Luis. El Diablo Cojuelo. Ed. Valdés, Ramón. Barcelona: Crítica, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Verene, Donald Phillip. Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Vinge, Louise. The Five Senses: Studies in a Literary Tradition. Lund: Royal Soc. of Letters at Lund, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Williams, Robert Haden. Boccalini in Spain. A Study of His Influence on Prose Fiction of the Seventeenth Century. Menasha: Banta, 1946. Print.Google Scholar