Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities. by Magdalena S.

Sanchez; Alain Saint-

Saens
Review by: Mindy Nancarrow Taggard
The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 249-250
Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2543273 .
Accessed: 12/06/2014 22:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The
Sixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:39:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Book Reviews 249

classificationof chapters.Morrison does demonstratethe intellectualbreadthand varietyof

Rabelais'sTiersLivre,and discussesthe effortsof Rabelaisto conceal the architectureof the
book.
In chapter2, the authorstudiesle QuartLivre.He providesa glimpseof the implications
of the Rabelaisianjourney when Panurgeconsults the Dive Bouteille in le QuartLivre.
Explainingthe differentsteps of publication,the authorjustly statesthat this particularbook
does not center on Panurge,shows the differentaspectsof the characters,and the difference
in their relationsto God.The readerfinds good explanationon these particularpoints,and
is invited to read again with great care particularchapters.Sticking to the text, the writer
convincinglydemonstratesthat le QuartLivregives an impressionof "turningawayfromthis
world,"comparedto le TiersLivre.
Chapter4 is dedicatedto the studyof le Velivre.Thoughthis book is rarelymentionedor
even taken into consideration,the author makes an importantpoint in summarizingthe
principalargumentsagainstits authenticity.As Morrisonjustly points out, the main reasonis
Rabelais's death, but internal and aesthetic arguments stand on their own. Analyzing this
book in the light of a powerful first draft, the discussion proves to be fruitfiul.
The last chapter is mainly dedicated to the art of le Tiers Livre and le Quart Livre.This is
certainly the most original and strongest part of the book. Based on well-known critical
works, the author's analysis moves with intelligence and facility between the microstructure
of these texts and the macrostructure of social and historical relations. Unfortunately, the
book has a very small bibliography, which will impair further readings.Yet the work is
intended as a "critical introduction," and in this respect the author more than fulfills his task.
The result is an important and accessible document about Rabelais. Rabelais: Tiers Livre,
Quart Livre,Ve Livrewould be an excellent book to suggest to advanced undergraduates, or
to graduate students who may not yet be familiar with current critical style.
Martine Sauret .......... Western Michigan University

Spanish Women in the Golden Age: Images and Realities. Ed. Magdalena
S. Sanchez and Alain Saint-Saens. Contributions in Women's Studies, no. 155.
Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1996. 229 pp. n.p.
In the prefaceof this book,Alain Saint-Saensstatesthatits goal is to providean interdis-
ciplinaryview of the history of women in earlymodern Spain"througharticlesaboutliter-
atureand psychoanalysis,social,political,religious,and artistichistory by respectedspecial-
ists from different countries."Overall,the volume meets the stated aims although an art
historianmight quibble that none of the essaysactuallyaddressesartistichistory.Only one,
Saint-Saenson hermitesses,even mentions a painting.Sanchezand Saint-Saens,who share
credit as editors,should be heartilycommended for bringing together into one accessible
volume stimulatingstudies by establishedhistorians,including Perry,Cruz, and Bilinkoff,
and some promisingyounger scholars.Theindividualessaysvarysomewhatin quality,but as
a whole the book offersa fresh,stimulatinglook at the waysin which Spanishwomen sought
to promote their own agendain a patriarchalsociety that sought to resolve gender conflict
with suppression.Only one of the essays,Bilinkoff'sstudyof the beataof Piedrahita,hasbeen
printedbefore,but in a somewhat differentform.
Saint-Saensexplains that in early modern Spain,"all eyes were focused on [women's]
writings,talk,body and its images,sexuality,and faith,even in their dreamsand visions."Yet
despitethis claustrophobicvigilance exercisedby the Spanishauthorities,women still man-
aged to carveout smallspacesof libertyand influencefor themselves.Sadly,these spacesusu-

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:39:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
250 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXVIII/ 1 (1997)

ally did not endure.Echaniz'sanalysisof the role of women in the militaryorderof Santiago
is a good choice to lead the volume,in partbecauseher time frameis somewhatanteriorto
that of most of the other essays.She shows that the militaryorderof Santiago,as it was orig-
inally constituted in the Middle Ages, offered women members more access to religious,
economic, and social powers than convents.These unique communities offreilaswere not
cloistered,and their commandersdependeddirectlyon the masterof the orderand the pope
ratherthanthe local clergy.But the male governorsincreasinglytried to control the women,
and the spacesdisappearedin the systematicreformof femalemonasticismcarriedout by the
Catholic Kings,Ferdinandand Isabella.Perry analyzesthe resistanceof moriscas, or Muslim
women who had convertedto Catholicism,to assimilationby the dominantculture.She sees
the morisco homes as bastionsof resistancewhere women playedimportantrolesin perpetu-
ating their Muslim religion and culturaltraditionsin their children.That subversiverole,
undertakenin domesticseclusion,was truncatedby the orderof the expulsionof themoriscos
from Spainissuedby Philip III in 1609. Sanchezoffersyet anotherexample of suppression.
She shows how contemporarychroniclersobscuredthe realpoliticalinfluenceof threepow-
erfulwomen at the court of Philip III by manipulatingtheir images in print.By describing
women in strictlydevotionalterms,they were able to absorbthem into the patriarchalorder
and to obscuretheir significancein history.
The editors sought to provide order to the volume by dividing the eleven essaysinto
three broad sections:Religion and Society,PoliticalRealms, and Female Identity.But the
difficulty of disentangling issues of faith and religious orthodoxy from politics in early
modern Spainis made clearin the overlappingof the first two divisions.Some essaysmight
have gained from being presentedin pairs.For example,Perry'slook at the moriscas (section
1) complements Sanchez'sstudy of the political pressureexerted by three pro-Austrian
female relativesof Philip III (section 2). Placed side by side, the two essayswould have
offereda provocativecomparisonof the ways in which classand religion determinedhow
women might exert influence in Spain.Finally,I would like to point out that three of the
essayscollected under the last section division,FemaleIdentity,are reallyabout prescriptive
images for women ratherthan any constructionof female identity.Perhapsthe editors did
not want to repeatthe title of the book in the section heading.The fourth,Vicente'slook at
women artisansin seventeenth-centuryBarcelona,is out of place in a section otherwise
devoted to genderin Spanishliterature.Her excellent analysisof the politicaland economic
issuessurroundingwomen'swork,developedarounda historicalfootnote, the "greatpopular
riot" of women spinnersin 1628, cries out for another section heading for working-class
women.
Mindy Nancarrow Taggard ..................... University of Alabama

Die katholische Konfessionalisierung:Wissenschaftliches Symposium der

Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum und desVereins
fur Reformationsgeschichte. Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, edi-
tors. Giitersloh: GiitersloherVerlagshaus, 1995. 472 pp. DM 148.
This collection of articlescomes out of a 1993 symposiumheld in Augsburgand orga-
nized jointly by the Catholic Gesellschaftzur Herausgabe des CorpusCatholicorum and the
Protestant(evangelische)Vereinfzar
ReformationsgeschichteThis academic conference was the
third to examine the "confessionalizationthesis,"following meetings on "Reformed con-
fessionalizationand "Lutheranconfessionalization." As in all such collections, the articlesin
this volume vary in quality and interest,but the centraltheme of confessionalizationdoes

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.54 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 22:39:56 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions