ABSTRACT

Pornographic Sensibilities stages a conversation between two fields—Medieval/Early Modern Hispanic Studies and Porn Studies—that traditionally have had little to say to each other. The collection offers innovative new approaches to the study of gendered and sexualized bodies in medieval and early modern textual production, including literary and historical documents. The volume’s embrace of the interpretative tools of Porn Studies also inscribes a critical provocation: in what ways can contemporary modes of reading the past serve to freshly illuminate not only the contours of that same past but also the very critical assumptions of the present upon which fields like medieval and early modern Hispanic Studies are built? In this way, Pornographic Sensibilities encourages at once both rigorous historicizations of pre- and early-modern culture, and playful engagement with "presentism," considered here as a critical tool to undress the hidden assumptions of both past and present. This move substantively challenges long-held critical orthodoxies among scholars of pre-Enlightenment periods, for whom the very category of "pornography" itself has often problematically been framed as an anachronism when applied to their work.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

Rethinking the Pornographic in Premodern and Early Modern Spanish Cultural Production

part One|124 pages

Pornographic Hispanisms

chapter 1|15 pages

Una “Paja” Mental?

The Fiction of Friction in the Arcipreste de Hita’s Story of Pitas Payas

chapter 3|19 pages

“Renaissance Erotica and Intertextuality”

New Ovidian Approximations and Cancionero Word Games in the Poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega

chapter 4|22 pages

Witty and Brief Eroticism

The Epigrams of Baltasar del Alcázar

chapter 6|31 pages

Dys/Eu-Phemisms

The Pornographic and the Erotic in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Poetry

part Two|57 pages

On the Visceral and Its (Dis)Contents

chapter 8|13 pages

Picarasploitation

From the Early Modern Period to the 80s Spanish TV Series

chapter 9|16 pages

“Tan mal francés como gastas”

Syphilis in the Poetry of Quevedo

chapter 10|11 pages

In Search of a Witness

Violence and Women in María de Zayas

part Three|65 pages

Haptic Arousals, Titillating the Senses

chapter 11|18 pages

“Cuando te tocares, niña”

An Approach to Images of Masturbation in Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Poetry

chapter 12|14 pages

Humors and Rumors

Sonic Viscerality in Juan Pérez de Montalbán’s La mayor confusión

chapter 13|15 pages

Materializing Desire in Two Literary Traditions

La Celestina and Xi Xiang Ji (Romance of the Western Chamber)