This essay examines the rhetorical and visual practices Juan Valverde implemented in his anatomical treatise Historia de la composici.n del cuerpo humano, which I argue aided in sharpening his readers’ observational skills while concurrently making use of collaborative techniques between artists, engravers, and printers in early modern publishing houses. Valverde cultivated his readers’...
The Forgotten Best Seller of the Confessional Age: The Many Lives of Luis de Granada’s Libro ...
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This article examines the best seller of the Spanish Golden Age, the Libro de la oración y meditación (Book on Prayer and Meditation). Released in 1554 by the Spanish Dominican Luis de Granada, the prayer book went through over one hundred editions by 1600, read and reproduced by both Catholics and Protestants in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Nahuatl, Spanish, and Zapotec....
Printing the Body of the Prince: Henri IV and Royal Portraiture
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During his pacification of France after the Wars of Religion, Henri IV savvily made use of print in order to legitimize his rule. Portraiture was a particularly important genre. Working with printmakers, Henri commissioned many engravings of himself in a popular three-quarter bust-length oval composition against a dark background. Rather than portraying Henri in a classicizing or mythological...
Liberating Speech: Confession and Dialogue in Marguerite de Navarre’s Les Prisons
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From a soteriological perspective, the process of salvation and spiritual liberation depicted in Les Prisons enacts the power of grace and seems to leave no room for human agency. At the same time, forms of dialogical speaking pervade the poem, and the spoken word, both human and divine, is featured as an instrument of confession and conversion. This coalescence of doctrine, speech, and...
“Means of Persuasion”: The Material Culture and Oppositional Politics of Two Counter-Reformation ...
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This article examines the religious and political projects of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria (1538–1612), and Luisa de Carvajal (1566–1614), two Counter-Reformation female agents who traveled between England and Spain. The first two sections offer case studies that investigate how these laywomen used objects to advance the Catholic cause and oppose English Protestant authority. Dormer’s ...
Learned without Book: English Grammar Schools and the Place of Textbooks in Early Modern Education
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William Shakespeare, like many other Elizabethans, took note of the fundamental change in the use of schoolbooks during the sixteenth century: from being rare teachers’ copies in the Middle Ages, schoolbooks became the common learning tools of schoolboys in early modernity. This article examines the timing of this change, its causes, and its far-reaching implications. Taking a book-history ...