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Vir: Perceptions of Manliness in Andalucía and México 1561–1699 by Federico Garza Carvajal (review)

2004; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 99; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2004.a826587

2222-4319

Mark Millington,

Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

MLR, 99.4, 2004 1079 richness and intricacy of Postmodernism without equating itwith the Post-Boom. By devoting sequel chapters to the 'Boom' and 'Post-Boom' chapters, not only does he succeed in nuancing his own voice, but he also finds the right structure forconveying the complex and evolving nature of writings usually lumped together under these rubrics. This clever strategy allows foran opportunity to trace the common concerns of a group of writers without shortchanging individual talents or overlooking par? ticular trajectories of recognized 'masters' of the boom who continue to write into the twenty-firstcentury. It is obvious that we do not expect a book of such monumental proportions to be intensely focused on textual analysis. However, Shaw's value-added strength con? sists in providing delightful nuggets of refreshing analytical insights (for example, his reading of Arevalo Martinez, p. 42). All in all, Shaw comes up with a highly ef? fective integrationof analysis and synthesis, literaryhistory and theoretical reflection, socio-political realities and literary techniques. As readers, we quickly become aware of being in the orbit of an eloquent and erudite master. And even when the plot of Spanish American literary history thickens, so to speak, with the proliferation of 'the Modernist [writings]' following the demise of the old-style criollista novel (p. 74), Shaw never fails to provide his readers with a map and a compass as he guides them through the forking paths of contemporary Spanish American narrative. Washington University in St Louis Elzbieta Sklodowska Vir: Perceptions of Manliness in Andalucia and Mexico 1561-1699. By Federico Garza Carvajal. (Amsterdam Historische Reeks, Kleine Serie, 41) Amster? dam: University of Amsterdam: 2000. xiv + 3o6pp. ISBN 90-73941-24-5. This book would probably not have been written, indeed it might not even have been conceivable, fifteen or twenty years ago. Such is the impact of feminist re? search and the shifts in awareness of gender that masculinity is no longer a more or less invisible construct, but is increasingly placed under the microscope of analysis. Federico Garza Carvajal examines evolving notions of 'manliness' in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Andalusia and Mexico through the discourses about sodomy revealed in trial records and metropolitan writing (histories, chronicles, letters) about Spain's largest viceroyalty. The context for his analysis of 'manliness' is Spain's imperial politics, which he sees as determinant of its changing model ofwhat a man was and was not. 'Manliness', idealized as 'Vir', is constituted, in part, through the construction of sodomy as the 'sin against nature' and the sodomite as Vir's 'other'. He argues that, from around 1492 and through the early modern period, and in order to buttress its imperial po? litics, there evolved a discourse about a new Spanish man, a construct riddled with sexism, religious intolerance, and xenophobic visions of power. 'Vir' was conceived as a collaborator of God in a shared process of creation on earth, possessing impeccable customs and displayinggallantry, honour, veneration forhis prince, heroic virtues, re? ligious fervour,dignity,and a capacity forsuffering.Women, sodomites, and the men of other nations were despised and yet necessary 'others'. Garza Carvajal sees the celebrated 1497 Royal Edict as marking a rupture with the tolerance of sodomy that was characteristic of the medieval period. So he emphasizes the Reformation/CounterReformation context and underlines that official discourses about sodomy did not remain static but changed with circumstances and need. He is also insistent that the areas of gender and specifically 'manliness' and the sodomite are not trivial byways but crucial to understanding social behaviour and the apparatus of colonial rule. Two examples of contrasting views of sodomy give a sense of the way discourses 1080 Reviews changed. Garza Carvajal argues that in early modern Spain the courts did not con? sider sodomy an expression of a 'psychological state', and so judges did not investigate the nature of the individual but simply sought to determine the material conditions ofthe act. By contrast, in the latter part ofthe seventeenth century sodomy was seen as an external sign of an internal moral disorder or an alteration of the economy of the passions. There were also differences between the construction of sodomy in the Peninsula and...