Teresa de Ávila: Portrait of the saint as a young woman

ABSTRACT

Teresa de Jesús (known as Teresa de Ávila in the English-speaking world) began life in a comfortable, merchant-class family. The daughter and granddaughter of conversos, she was one of twelve children (two from the first marriage of Don Alonso de Cepeda, Teresa's father, and ten from the second). She received a good education for a girl of her period and class, probably learning to read and write from parents and tutors, and then studying at a convent boarding school. She undoubtedly learned the importance of letter writing from her father, as business in early modern Europe was conducted largely through correspondence. Although traditional biographers paint a romanticized view of Teresa's girlhood, a careful reading of her Vida, letters, and other documents reveals that there were many strains on the Cedepa-Ahumada household. Among the causes were the Cepedas' deteriorating financial situation, societal pressures on conversos, the death of Teresa's mother, tensions among the siblings, the departure of Teresa's brothers for the New World, and Teresa's illness.     

The Levelling Process as a Function of the Masses in the View of Kierkegaard and Ortega Y Gasset

The present article is an analysis of the emergence of a new Uruguayan author, Armonía Somers (1914–94), as well as the publication in 1950 of her first novel, La mujer desnuda (The Naked Woman). It focuses on the Uruguayan social body of the 1950s, when society lived the paradox of recognizing women in its legal structure, but limiting them in the everyday social and cultural life. In this context, Somers's novel symbolically explores what I call the “crisis of feminine subjectivity,” through the creation of a woman who on her thirtieth birthday decided to throw away all the costumes and masks with which society and tradition imposed feminine roles and, naked, tried new ways of being, new subjectivities. Central to this study is an analysis of the different ways in which historical, social, and cultural demands produce certain kinds of human bodies, especially how they produce a woman's body. The specific argument that underlies this article is that the body inserts itself in conflictive and tense manners with the marks imposed on the genders. This article's theoretical contribution lies in its emphasis on the aesthetic and ethical ramifications of “feminine subjectivities” and “historical marked bodies” in a fiction that presents itself as a black box in which Somers finds herself as a woman who became a novelist in the 1950s and in which readers also find themselves questioning the persistence of gender marks on their own social bodies.     

Revuelta plebeya,conciencia criolla y reivindicación jesuita: política y gobernanza en la Historia del Reino de Quito,de Juan de Velasco

Este artículo propone una lectura de la Historia del Reino de Quito en la América Meridional (1789), de Juan de Velasco, a partir de las ideas políticas y jurídicas de su autor. Sugiere abordar el tomo tercero de la Historia no solamente como un relato del declive social y económico que aqueja a la Audiencia de Quito, sino como un comentario a la crisis de gobernanza que, según Velasco, inicia con el ascenso de los Borbones al trono. La incapacidad jurídica de controlar la mestización de la sociedad y las desacertadas políticas de las autoridades peninsulares, resultan en la Rebelión de los Barrios de Quito, episodio que representa el clímax de las penurias que atraviesa el Reino y que le permite a Velasco cuestionar el modelo de gobierno establecido por los reformistas ilustrados, abogar por la necesidad de un gobierno criollo y restaurar la desgastada imagen de la Compañía de Jesús.     

Budgetary Punctuations: A Fiscal Management Perspective

Although the development of punctuated equilibrium theory makes broad reference to the bureaucratic procedures that regulate budgetary decision making and makes reasonable assumptions about the influence of those procedures on the dynamic of resource allocation, little is known about how the specific mechanisms work. This has led to a call to understand the processes that cause friction in greater detail. This study examines how budgetary output patterns may be influenced by governments' strategic fiscal choices. Using an approach that highlights the roles of various fiscal policy-making processes, we found significant deviations of budgetary output patterns in capital projects, restricted funds, and entitlement spending, thus signifying the influence of fiscal practices on resource allocation decisions. We further examined how fiscal influences may be realized in the political process of democratization in Hong Kong. By examining legislative filibuster cases related to capital projects, we found evidence associating democratization with greater institutional friction and consequently with larger budgetary output punctuations.     

The (Ir)relevance of the Aside in Golden Age Drama

The professionalization of public theatre in late sixteenth-century Spain transformed the public street drama of playwrights and actors such as Lope de Rueda into an activity whose survival and success depended on ticket sales and attendance. It is within this context that the aside became one of the most popular dramatic techniques of Spain's Golden Age theater. This article seeks to answer two questions about the aside: (1) Do Golden Age playwrights utilize the aside in the same manner? and (2) Does the subgenre of a comedia dictate the use of a particular category of aside? I propose to answer these questions, focusing in particular on the different ways that the following comedias utilize the aside to transform the audience from mere spectators to active accomplices of what they witness on stage: Calderón de la Barca's El alcalde de Zalamea (comedia de honor), Antonio Mira de Amescua's El esclavo del demonio (comedia hagiográfica), and Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla (comedia moral).     

The Noble Savage in the Voyage of La Perouse (1785–1788)

The gaucho is an almost mythical character in Argentine Literature, sometimes because of his barbarism and other times as a result of his heroism. In the nineteenth century the gaucho was characterized in very antagonistic ways; the spectrum extends from symbolizing the national backwardness to personifying the country's national identity. Sarmiento describes gauchos in Facundo (1845) as uncivilized and lazy individuals inclined to the savage ways of the caudillos. On the other hand, José Hernández in Martín Fierro (1872) portrays the gaucho as a brave wise man who is worthy of being considered the model citizen for the new nation. Both representations give a glimpse to the lack of objectivity, obscured by the passionate views of the authors in whose works the gaucho is either attacked or mystified. The characterization of the gaucho as a barbarian or national hero are the two more popular and known positions, but they are not the only views. Another nineteenth-century Argentine writer, Juana Manuela Gorriti in Panoramas de la vida (1876) offers a conciliating and intriguing position in her foundational narrative that was conveniently silenced for almost a century. Her approach reflects the complexity of the gaucho, indicating that this individual can be heroic—like the General Güemes and his troop of gauchos who defended the freedom of the incipient country—or uncivilized, like Facundo Quiroga and Juan Manuel de Rosas who did not respect the citizens’ rights. But most importantly, she offers an insight into the gaucho's way of life that subverts the well-known ‘civilization versus barbarism’ discourse, positioning the gaucho and his wife, the paisana, as a crucial link of the economic national wealth. In other words, Gorriti presented this marginalized group as legitimate citizens of the territory who distinctly deserved to maintain their property and freedom, since they contributed to building the motherland.     

El comercio de libros entre Europa y América en la Sevilla del siglo XVI: Impresores,libreros y mercaderes

Este artículo estudia la importancia de la Sevilla del siglo XVI como el centro del comercio de libros entre Europa y la América hispana. Uno de sus objetivos consiste en poner de manifiesto el papel que desempeñaron los grandes libreros, impresores y mercaderes de las principales plazas tipográficas del Viejo continente en la Carrera de Indias; sobre todo los flamencos, italianos y franceses. Estos mercaderes fueron los que abastecían a España y el Nuevo Mundo de libros cultos y profesionales en latín. Mientras que los peninsulares solían ser sus intermediarios en los negocios atlánticos y, a lo sumo, satisfacían de demanda americana de libros en romance, baratos y de alta popularidad. En definitiva, Sevilla y el libro fueron dos protagonistas esenciales de aquella era primera de la globalización económica-cultural.     

Getting Acquainted With Alfonso Hernández-Catá

Traditionally it has been considered that Castilian cancionero poetry has hardly preserved diálogos interestróficos, such as the primitive tensón. However, the Cancionero de Palacio contains a very significant sample of the different possibilities of the cancioneril dialogic mold: beyond poetic dialogue forms more common in Fifteenth Century Spanish poetry, through whole texts juxtaposed, the Cancionero de Palacio contains several other more original forms, and as a result it serves as a codex unicus. This article offers, for the first time, an analysis of all the diálogos interestróficos collected in this Cancionero. This analysis contradicts the widely held view about the rarity and scarcity of these texts and confirms the originality of the dialogic schemes and the strong presence of polyphonic texts in this colectánea. The article presents a list of twelve compositions—a very significant number—in which the dialogue articulates all the text, with voices alternating stanza to stanza or even within each stanza. After establishing this body of work, the study centers on a typological analysis based on the voices found in these poems.     

En tiempos del condestable Dávalos: Enrique de Aragón,poeta quejoso en Crónica. Año de 1420, de Jerónimo de la Escosura

Infants of Aragon are very important figures in the history and literature of the nineteenth century, but it is rare that one of them, Don Enrique, is the protagonist. This work analyzes the romantic story Cronica. Año de 1420, published by Jerónimo de la Escosura in 1839. In it, Enrique de Aragón is a cunning courtier and a poet in love, and he manages to change history because he changes the story with his verses.     

El codescubridor Juan Niño y el puerto de San Juan en el marco de la marinería andaluza y de los viajes de Colón

Este trabajo de investigación ofrece resultados inéditos en relación con Juan Niño —maestre y propietario de la carabela Niña— que colaboró de forma relevante con Cristóbal Colón en la preparación de la armada en 1492 y en su primera travesía oceánica a tierras americanas. Asimismo, desvela el lugar concreto de vecindad y de residencia de este marino en el puerto de San Juan (Huelva, España) mediante documentación contrastada, así como el periodo en el que se produjo su fallecimiento permitiendo aclarar especulaciones historiográficas que ofrecían determinados datos erróneos sobre su trayectoria vital después del descubrimiento de América. Por último, aporta datos indicativos sobre el estatus socioeconómico y el nivel de rentas disfrutado por el codescubridor de América y por su familia.     

The Role of Regulations in the Spanish Housing Dispossession Crisis: Towards Dispossession by Regulations?

This paper explores the role of regulations and economic policies implemented in post-crisis Spain in boosting a housing dispossession crisis. The article first claims that the post-2008 crisis has implied shifts in the mechanisms of rent extraction from housing in Spain. Second, it is argued that those shifts in rent extraction have been fuelled by the post-crisis economic policies and regulatory frameworks implemented since 2008. Third, it is claimed that dispossession has been a central strategy used by banks to cope with the new post-crisis regulatory framework. The article thus analyses the different strategies carried out by banks and hedge funds to enforce foreclosures and other dispossession strategies since 2008. Furthermore, it explores the different motivations and ideologies that led to the roll out of different banking regulations and the variegated impacts that these regulations have had on Spanish bank and hedge fund strategies vis-à-vis housing dispossession.     

Contiguity and Similarity as Poetic Modes in Some Poems of Gongora

This article explores how different authors who suffered the violence of the 1970s and 1980s revolutionary movements and military dictatorships in the Southern Cone countries of Latin America look back from a post-dictatorship present to write the history of their recent past. Nostalgia and critical reflection join forces to recreate the feelings of loss of individuals whose identities crashed due to the failure of political projects that once were conceived as messianic, as well as to critically reclaim the past in order to construct alternative futures for themselves as individuals and for the community. The article focuses mainly on the Chilean Diamela Eltit's novel Jamás el fuego nunca (2007), in which an old couple of former revolutionary militants of the Left imprisoned in a claustrophobic space—an old bed—explore their past as militants and as a couple to understand and question notions of individual and collective identity in the aftermath of traumatic and tumultuous experiences. The novel is read in the context of other narratives such as Chilean Luz Arce's testimonial, El infierno (1993) and Argentine political scientist Pilar Calveiro's essays, Poder y desaparición (1998) and Política y/o violencia (2005), among others. This article's theoretical contribution lies in its emphasis on the ethical consideration of listening to all of the narratives that speak to us about that era cognizant of their differing motivations, desires, tonalities, and subjective trajectories. Only by paying close attention to the polyphony of voices and documents about the past—especially those that speak to us from a time of subjective crisis and trauma—can we achieve a true sense of historicity.