A book about life in Spain from the succession of Philip II (1556) to the death of Philip IV (1665). The author relies primarily upon careful use of literary works and travel accounts written during this 'golden age'. In addition to delightful descriptions and anecdotes, he has woven into his text important political and economic developments. He provides a general view of Spain, stressing the importance of the Catholic faith and the emphasis upon personal honour, before surveying life and society in urban and rural areas. He then examines in some detail life in the Church, university, military and home; public entertainment; and the picaresque life.

The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain explores the practice of sacramental confession in Spain between roughly 1500 and 1700. One of the most significant points of contact between the laity and ecclesiastical hierarchy, confession lay at the heart of attempts to bring religious reformation to bear upon the lives of early modern Spaniards. Rigid episcopal legislation, royal decrees, and a barrage of prescriptive literature lead many scholars to construct the sacrament fundamentally as an instrument of social control foisted upon powerless laypeople. Drawing upon a wide range of early printed and archival materials, this book considers confession as both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. Rather than relying solely upon prescriptive and didactic literature, it considers evidence that describes how the people of early modern Spain experienced confession, offering a rich portrayal of a critical and remarkably popular component of early modern religiosity.

This book should appeal to all aficionados of the romance of the sea as well as to specialists in Spanish and Latin American colonial history.--Benjamin Keen, author of A History of Latin America

Spain’s Golden Age may be defined as the extraordinary moment when the visual arts, architecture, literature, and music all reached unprecedented heights. Featuring a diverse selection of more than 100 outstanding works produced by leading artists from Spain and its global territories, Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain is the first exhibition in the United States to expand the notion of the “Golden Age” to include the Hispanic world beyond the shores of the Iberian Peninsula. Such far-flung Spanish-controlled centers as Antwerp, Naples, Mexico, Lima, and the Philippines are represented by paintings, sculpture and decorative arts of astounding quality and variety from the pivotal years of about 1600 to 1750. Artists featured in the exhibition include Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, El Greco, Juan de Valdés Leal, Juan Sánchez Cotán, and many more. This exhibition also marks the first time since the 1935 exhibition for the California Pacific International Exposition that all five of the Spanish masters represented on the Museum’s building façade—Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, Ribera and El Greco—will be shown together at the Museum. Art and Empire: The Golden Age of Spain is organized into four sections including The Courtly Image: Portraiture in the Hispanic World; The Rise of Naturalism; Art in the Service of Faith; and Splendors of Daily Life and Global Materials, and represent more than 10 countries, including Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. There will also be a wide variety of public programming to complement the show, including a symposium featuring notable scholars from around the world, a lecture by Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, London, as well as a film series, textile and cochineal dye workshops, performances by the San Diego Ballet, a Spanish jazz band, traditional Flamenco performances, community and outreach programs, and much more.--from Exhibition's website

"Over the past several years, a series of extraordinary cutting edge developments have taken place in Golden Age Spanish studies. Important new issues have been addressed--and conceived--in innovative ways: questions of gender and sexuality; concepts of self and other; political and social contexts of literary production and reception. While these investigations have already begun to have a significant impact on our current reconceptualization of culture in general and Spanish culture in particular, they have until now been somewhat overly dispersed, even fragmented--in large part because of their very nature as rethinkings, as experimental. The present volume constitutes a collective examination of these kinds of key cultural issues within the historically specific context of Golden Age Spain, configured around the central question of authority."--Marina S. Brownlee, from the Preface. In a wide-ranging series of essays, the contributors to this volume bring recent critical and theoretical perspectives to bear on our understanding of culture in Golden Age Spain, focusing on the related notions of authority, authorship, selfhood, and tradition in Spanish culture. This book will appeal to Hispanists and comparatists interested in contemporary perspectives on the literature and culture of medieval and Renaissance Spain as well as to medievalists and Renaissance specialists interested in Spanish literature. Contributors: La Schwartz Lerner, Jos Regueiro, Edward H. Friedman, Mary Malcolm Gaylord, Marina S. Brownlee, Paul Julian Smith, Harry Sieber, Robert ter Horst, Ruth El Saffar, Anthony J. Cascardi, Diana de Armas Wilson, Walter Cohen, Joan Ramn Resina, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.