Two Scripts for a Single Stage. Naples, Barcelona and Lisbon in the Spanish Empire: Old Civic Traditions and New Court Practices (original) (raw)
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Since the Middle Ages and, over all, the Early Modern Age exists in the Crown of Castile, as in the rest of the Hispanic area, an extensive literature —first handwritten, printed soon— on history and description of cities. Choreographies and stories eminently "christianopolitans" in the context of the fight for Christian and Catholic identity against the Islam of Al-Andalus and Judaism of Sepharad secondarily. As in other parts of Europe, forges a way of seeing, feeling, yearning for a given city, parallel to the formation of the Spanish homeland pride. The Kingdom of Castile sits on their cities, represented in parliamentary meetings “Cortes”, at the expense of the nobility and clergy since 1538. The King of Castile and Leon, "crowns" and within its cities, symbolic, political and even economically. But during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, with the Habsburg dinasty, the Castilian cities got oligarchy around a socially intermediate elites, which drives many intellectual companies of urban exaltation: stories-choreographies, abstracts, landscapes and citizens views, building civic monuments (town halls, places, etc..). A whole new way of perceiving the city and urban, which overcomes the harsh reality of many crises to fetch sometimes mystical ideal. These contrasts between myths and realities in the most important cities of Castile in the Sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will be the subject of this paper, of the meta-urban-historical character
The Journal of Baroque Studies, 2018
The paper proposes an approach to comparative and interdisciplinary historical analysis on the «Città nuove» (new towns) founded in the territories of the Spanish kingdom between 16th and 17th century. The phenomenon of the new settlements characterised European urban history from the late Middle Ages, being particularly relevant at the beginning of the Modern Age in Sicily and in the colonies of the New World, in terms of characteristics and the high number of settlements. Consequently, the paper focuses on various issues in these two areas, as they seem to present useful features for future comparative analysis.
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Visible Cities: The Urban Face of Iberian Empire CONFERENCE, 2009
"Visible Cities: The Urban Face of Iberian Empire" CONFERENCE Sponsored by Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures; the Tinker Foundation; the Stanford Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; the Stanford Humanities Center; the Stanford Mediterranean Studies Forum; and the Stanford Iberian Studies Program. Event Details: Although there is an abundant literature on empire in the social sciences, the comparative study of specific empires tends to have at its analytical center particularly British forms of colonial expansion and administration. Based on these forms, various comparative strategies have recently been proposed for the consideration of Iberian centers of imperial power (i.e., Castile, The Crown of Aragon, and Portugal). What would a study of Iberian empires on their own terms look like? In other words, how might we theorize the formation and functioning of Iberian empires outside of teleologies that foreground these empires' eventual collapse and the rise of British imperial power? To begin to identify what we mean by Iberian forms of imperial power is the focus the present congress. Some key questions include: What motives did Iberian empires have to expand? What techniques (whether discursive, theological, political, or military) did they employ? What is their territorial logic? How do they legitimate their power and imperial aspirations? What might be, to put it in Weberian terms, the imperial legitimacy of the Iberian powers? Are empires possible in the absence of political theology? How do they represent space through maps and other representations of totality? How have Iberian empires served as the inspiration for contemporary imperial expansion? What sorts of resistance formed to oppose Iberian empires? What are the links that join the rebels? What is the role of the city in the formation, maintenance, and shaping of Iberian empire? Why are some cities (such as Antwerp and Ceuta) seen as loyal to Iberian imperial power while others (such as Barcelona and Messina) are characterized as inherently rebellious and unruly? Why do some resistance movements succeed where others fail? What occurs when we place cities, previously invisible or at least in the shadows, at the center of our consideration of Iberian imperial power?