This book samples a cross-section of literature from the Spanish Renaissance, and discovers a surprising flavor of ferment, discontent, and subversion often masked by the pervasive perfumes of stability - church, state, and wealth. This slice of time includes writings from the battlefield, the village square, and the intellectual's ivory tower. It features eye-witness observations of an uprising against the feudal establishment (De Motu Hispaniae), an outrageously vulgar send-up of institutionalized virtue (Carajicomedia), a biting and astute satire of religious and political more by a leading Erasmian reformer (Dialogo de Mercurio y Caron), the prototype picaresque novel (Lazarillo de Tormes), bitter tales of women's struggle for freedom and fulfillment (La Celestina, La historia de Grisel y Mirabella), and a surprising feminist treatise on the overall superiority of women (Triunfo de las donas). The author traces subversive thought through writings from both society's elites and its fringes, teasing out the interlacing strands of feminism, secularism, and materialism, and amplifying the cries for reform from the burgeoning bottom end of society. Antonio Perez-Romero is Associate Professor of Spanish at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
