Bodies beyond Labels explores moments of joy and joyful expressions of self-identity, intimacy, sexuality, affect, friendship, social relationships, and religiosity in imperial Spanish cultures, a period when embodiments of such joy were shadowed by comparatively more constrictive social conventions.
Viewed in this manner, joy frames historic references to gender, sexuality, and present-day concepts of queerness through homoeroticism, non-labelled bodies, gender fluidity, and performativity. This collection reveals diverse glimmers of joy through a variety of genres, including plays, poems, novels, autobiographies, biblical narratives, and civil law texts, among others. The book is divided into five categories: theatrical works that use mythology to enjoy themes of homoeroticism; narrative prose and visual arts that reveal public and private homoerotic expressions; scopophilia within garden and museum spaces that make possible joyous observations of non-labelled and non-corporeal bodies; biblical narratives and epistolary works that signal religious transgressions of gender and friendship; and sexual geographies explored in historic and legal documents.
As new generations develop more nuanced senses of gender and sexual identities, Bodies beyond Labels strives to provide new academic optics, as framed by non-labelled bodies, queer theorizations, joy in unexpected places, and the light that has historically (re)emerged from the shadows.
Edited by:
Daniel Holcombe,
Frederick A. de Armas
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions:
Height: 249mm,
Width: 157mm,
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 600g
ISBN: 9781487556891
ISBN 10: 1487556896
Series: Toronto Iberic
Pages: 346
Publication Date: 13 August 2024
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Introduction Part I. Expressions of Joy in Light and Shadow: Pagan Myth and Christian Gazes 1. Forging Ganymede in Winckelmann’s History of the Art of Antiquity and Lope de Vega’s El castigo sin venganza Frederick A. de Armas 2. Ganymede, Narcissus, and the Joys of Teasing the Pagan in Tirso de Molina’s Religious La mejor espigadera (1614) Felipe E. Rojas Part II. Homoeroticism as Joyous Loving 3. Secret Intimacies: Eternal Homoeroticism in Cervantes’s El curioso impertinente Daniel Holcombe 4. Queer Raptures Past and Present: Saint Sebastian and the Homoerotics of Martyrdom in Early Modern Spain and Italy José R. Cartagena-Calderón 5. El casamiento entre dos damas by Pedro de Navarro: Finding the Joys of Non-Heteronormativity in the Shadows of an Early Modern Spanish Romance Pablo Restrepo Gautier Part III. Celebrating Joyful Non-Labelled Bodies: Defying Fixed Identities 6. Joyful Visual Reinterpretations of Cervantes’s Dulcinea at the Graphic Humour Museum That Bears Her Name María José Domínguez 7. Gardens of Gendered Joy in Tirso de Molina’s El vergonzoso en palacio (1621) Lizette Arellano Part IV. Joys of Heaven and Earth 8. The Laugh of the Tenth Muse Emilie Bergmann 9. “Special Friendships” in the Convent Bárbara Mujica 10. Trans-figura-d in Joy: The Sensuality of Celestial Feasts in the Pageants of Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534) Jessica A. Boon Part V. Finding Joy in Unexpected Places: Geographies of Sexual Exploration 11. Early Global Sexualities: Antonio Pigafetta and Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca Juan Pablo Gil-Oslé 12. (Dis)locations of Sodomy in Early Modern Spain Gregory S. Hutcheson Contributors Index
Daniel Holcombe is an associate professor of Spanish at Georgia College & State University. Frederick A. de Armas is Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago..
Reviews for Bodies beyond Labels: Finding Joy in the Shadows of Imperial Spain
"""With Bodies beyond Labels, Daniel Holcombe and Frederick A. de Armas add a wide-ranging, provocative volume to the corpus of scholarly work examining queer subjectivities, identities, and desires in Inquisition-era imperial Spain. Not only do the essays shed fresh light on queer discourses in both expected and unexpected texts, but they also offer critical approaches that will surely prove valuable to future investigators.""--Christopher B. Weimer, Professor of Spanish, Oklahoma State University ""This timely volume of collected essays provides a fresh examination of queer identities in early modern Spain. Whether exploring the home or the stage, the court or the convent, visual or literary sources, each author brings to light embodied expressions of joy that challenge social norms. Bodies beyond Labels provides scholars today with a new understanding of the organic nature of queerness as it plays out both in works of fiction and in historic and legal documents. Enjoy!""--Carolyn A. Nadeau, Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish, Illinois Wesleyan University"
