The Optics of Bodily Deviance: Juan Ruiz de Alarcón’s Path to Public Office

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo García Piñar
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Public Office ◽  
Bodily Appearance ◽  
Administrative Position ◽  
Juan Ruiz ◽  
Juan Ruiz De Alarcon

Through an account of New Spanish playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y Mendoza’s path to secure an administrative position for himself in seventeenth-century Spain’s Hapsburg administrative apparatus, this essay discusses the cultural and social conditions that led to the administration’s persistent preoccupation with its public image and, in particular, with the safeguarding of its authority. I argue that the instances of public contempt expressed by his peers – on account of the severe bodily deformity Ruiz de Alarcón suffered from – played a decisive role in the decision of the Council of the Indies to ban the playwright from any public office. The council’s behaviour reflects the restraining influence that the Hapsburg administration exercised over the physical appearance of state officials. This essay also discusses how Ruiz de Alarcón challenges the logic behind this disciplining of bodily appearance in his play Las paredes oyen.

Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y su tiempo

Hispania ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 338
Author(s):  
Alfred Coester ◽  
Julio Jimenez Rueda ◽  
Carlos F. McHale ◽  
Fidelino de Figueiredo ◽  
Ruth Matilda Anderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Juan Ruiz ◽  
Juan Ruiz De Alarcon

Anonymous Renovators of Icons

2018 ◽  
pp. 153-191
Author(s):  
Karin Vélez
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Public Image ◽  
The World ◽  
Roman Painting

This chapter begins by examining how two peripheral artworks of the Virgin of Loreto, the eighteenth-century wooden statue from the Moxos missions and the seventeenth-century Roman painting by Caravaggio, each tapped into outside streams of Marian art. The same impetus for transformation is observed for the original icon of the Madonna of Loreto at the Italian shrine. Updates to this icon were spurred by an awareness of the world outside Loreto. The chapter concludes with a return to the frontier, to Canada, to consider some significantly named but lesser known Huron women converts who contributed to Mary's global public image. Overall, these case studies of modifications to the Virgin of Loreto reflect what mattered to people on both sides of the Atlantic about Mary at this time: she was alien, yet she was accessible; she moved, and she could also be moved.

Prophecy

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-212
Author(s):  
Yaacob Dweck
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Epistemological Problem ◽  
Rapid Spread

This chapter discusses Sabbatian messianism as an epistemological problem. How does one know whether or not someone is the Messiah? In the middle of the seventeenth century, prophecy was one way of obtaining such knowledge. Prophecy played a decisive role in the success of Sabbatianism. Adherents to the new movement emphasized the renewal of revelation both in the period of its rapid spread prior to Sabbetai Zevi's conversion as well as in the years that followed. Beginning with the leading Sabbatian propagandist, Nathan of Gaza, and continuing well into the eighteenth century, Sabbatians spoke and wrote about their activities as prophecy. Repeatedly they invoked their own capacity to communicate with the divine as a source for their own authority. Indeed, prophecy often served as the legitimating grounds for their suspension of legal norms and invention of new rituals. The chapter then looks at Jacob Sasportas's response to the Sabbatian renewal of prophecy as well as to other modes of knowing, such as dreams and astrology. For all of Sasportas's profound skepticism about the Sabbatian revival of prophecy, he refused to condemn the category outright. Just as he had continued to insist on his belief in the messianic idea but rejected Sabbetai Zevi as its fulfillment, he continued to hold open the possibility of prophecy while denying the legitimacy of Nathan of Gaza.

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