ABSTRACT
Despite having provoked the indignation of several moralists—including Francisco de Quevedo and González de Amezúa—a collection of novellas dealing with illicit themes, entitled Sucesos y prodigios de amor (1624), surprisingly managed to escape inquisitorial censorship. The text that most scandalized contemporary critics in the collection was La mayor confusión, whose plot deals with an incredible case of incest. It may seem surprising that censors would have seen nothing condemnable in such a plot but, as this chapter argues, censors couldn’t have seen anything worthy of censorship because the erotic charge of the work is in fact kept invisible. The work’s eroticism, as this chapter suggests, remains confined not to sight but to the sensory domain of sound. This study contends that the soundscape of Madrid, coupled with the sonorous interactions of the text’s protagonists, illustrates a so-called pornography that easily escaped the scrutiny of censors.
