126.

1  ]

theories  and
methodologies

Golden Age or Early

Modern: What’s in
a Name?
As few Hispanists have failed to notice, early modern Spain
is more often appearing as an alternative term for what we
used to call the Spanish Golden Age. University catalogs still advertise alison weber
courses on Golden Age poetry, but lectures are more apt to bear titles
such as “The Crisis of the Gift in Early Modern Spain.” Although
some recent books—Inventing the Sacred: Imposture, Inquisition,
and the Boundaries of the Supernatural in Golden Age Spain (Keitt),
Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (Taylor), and An Erotic Phi-
lology of Golden Age Spain (Martín)—display Golden Age in their
titles, they share shelf space with offerings such as The Drama of the
Portrait: Theater and Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain (Bass),
Imperial Lyric: New Poetry and New Subjects in Early Modern Spain
(Middlebrook), and Family and Community in Early Modern Spain:
The Citizens of Granada (Casey). The preference for early modern is
showing up even in genres in which traditional usage might be ex-
pected. An anthology by Barbara Mujica, published in 1991, is subti-
tled Renacimiento y Siglo de Oro, but the cover of an anthology edited
by her and published thirteen years later reads Sophia’s Daughters:
Women Writers of Early Modern Spain. Similarly, the heading chosen
for the section on sixteenth- and seventeenth-­century literature in
The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature is “Early Modern Spain:
Renaissance and Baroque” (Gies). Notably, Golden Age is not reserved
for studies on literature or art (Keitt’s and Taylor’s books, for example,
treat religious and legal history, respectively), and, by the same token,
early modern is deemed an appropriate rubric for studies of poetry
and drama. We are left wondering if the two terms are essentially Alison Weber, professor of Spanish at
interchangeable. If we attempt to differentiate usage more sharply, the University of Virginia, is the author of
what are the repercussions for how we conduct research and teach? Teresa of Ávila and the Rhetoric of Feminin-
ity (Princeton UP, 1990) and the editor of
What are the consequences for how or whether we reach particular
Approaches to Teaching Teresa of Ávila and
audiences? In posing these questions, I am mindful that postmodern
the Spanish Mystics (MLA, 2009). Her essay
theory has challenged the very legitimacy of periodization as an in- “Lope de Vega’s Rimas sacras: Conversion,
tellectual enterprise. My position here is one of pragmatic skepticism. Clientage, and the Performance of Mascu-
I hold that periodization is historically constructed, ideologically linity” appeared in PMLA 120.2 (2005).

[  © 2011 by the moder n language association of america  ] 225

 226 Golden Age or Early Modern: What’s in a Name?
laden, cognitively necessary, and provisionally
theories  and methodologies
useful for teaching and research.
Long before early modern gained cur-
rency, Golden Age was a problematic appella-
tion. Let us start with the definition of siglo
de oro (“golden century”) in María Moliner’s
ubiquitous Diccionario de uso del español:
“Cual­quier período considerado de esplendor,
de felicidad, de justicia, etc. Específicamente,
época de mayor esplendor de la literatura es-
pañola, que abarca parte de los siglos XVI y
XVII” (“Any period considered one of splen-
dor, happiness, justice, etc. Specifically, the
epoch of greatest splendor in Spanish litera-
ture, which includes part of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries”). The first problem is
chronological. How does a golden century last
a century and a half? Should the chronological
bookends be moments of cultural or political
significance? Does the age of splendor begin
when Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega
decided to try their hand at the languorous
Italian hendecasyllable and finally grasped
the concept of the volta in the Petrarchan
sonnet? If we choose political markers, does
the Golden Age begin in 1516, when the first
Hapsburg assumed the throne as Charles I of
Spain; in 1519, when he was elected Emperor
Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire; or in
1525, when he defeated the Comunero rebels
and pacified Castile? The terminus ad quem
is similarly debatable. The year 1681, which
marks the death of the prolific and long-­lived
playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca, is a
popular choice in literary handbooks. But
for the historian Bartolomé Bennassar, the
Golden Age had definitively come to an end
by 1648, when Spain, weakened by plague and
famine and on the verge of economic collapse,
abandoned its claim to the Netherlands and
signed the Treaty of Westphalia (11–16, 330–
35). In sum, there is little agreement about
which events mark or even contribute to the
beginning and ending of the Golden Age. Is
cultural stagnation brought about by political
or economic decline? How closely can the ex-
[  P M L A
haustion of an age be linked to the demise of
a prolific genius? Ironically, whether the per-
spective is literary or historical, the question
of defining the Golden Age seems inextricable
from the question of decline.
This brings us to another problematic as-
pect of Moliner’s definition. For whom was
the Golden Age an epoch of splendor, happi-
ness, and justice? Clearly not for the soldiers,
peasants, slaves, prostitutes, and indigenous
peoples pressed into labor on New World
en­co­mien­das. Even Don Quijote was acutely
conscious of living in an iron age. As he de-
claims to Sancho and an assembled crowd of
mystified goatherds, “Dichosa edad y siglos
di­cho­sos aquellos a quien los antiguos pu­sie­
ron nom­bre de dorados, y no porque en ellos
el oro, que en esta nuestra edad de hierro tanto
se estima, se alcanzase en aquella venturosa
sin fatiga alguna, sino porque entonces los que
en ella vivían ignoraban estas dos palabras de
tuyo y mío” (“Fortunate the age and fortunate
the times called golden by the ancients, and
not because gold, which in this our age of iron
is so highly esteemed, could be found then
with no effort, but because those who lived in
that time did not know the words thine and
mine”; Don Quijote 121; Don Quixote 76; pt. 1,
ch. 11). From this perspective, Bennassar’s
definition of the concept is surely an improve-
ment over Moliner’s: “la memoria selectiva
que conservamos de una época en la que Es-
paña ha mantenido un papel dominante en el
mundo, ya se trate de la política, de las armas,
de la diplomacia, de la moneda, de la religión,
de las artes o de las letras” (“the selective mem-
ory we keep of an epoch in which Spain main-
tained a dominant role in the world, whether
in terms of politics, arms, diplomacy, wealth,
religion, arts, or letters”; 10; my emphasis).
This selectivity was used effectively during
the Franco regime, which claimed to have
resurrected the Golden Age values of auster-
ity, militarism, and Catholic piety. Writing
from exile in the United States, Américo Cas-
tro famously jettisoned the term and coined
126.1   ] Alison Weber
“la edad conflictiva” (“the age of conflict”).
The preference for what might be called the
French solution—identifying periods with
centuries—is understandable (e.g., García
Santo-­Tomás; Parr). Interestingly, the Library
of Congress and the Biblioteca Nacional de
España use neutral subject terms: “Spanish
literature—classical period—1500–1700” and
“Li­te­ra­tura española—S. XVI y XVII—Histo-
ria y crítica” (“Spanish literature—sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries—History and
criticism”). Nomenclature for divisions in the
Modern Language Association coincides with
that of the Biblioteca Nacional.
But is the issue simply one of finding an
acceptable alternative for a term with dis-
puted chronological brackets and uncomfort-
able ideological baggage? In his introduction
to Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism
in the Early Modern Era, John W. O’Malley
muses on an analogous problem: “What’s in
a name? Sometimes very little. A rose still
smells as sweet. Even designations for histori-
cal phenomena like ‘the Middle Ages’ that
were once loaded with prejudices lose them
through repeated usage. They become the
equivalent of dead metaphors, where the im-
age loses its punch” (1). He goes on to describe
how he came to change his mind about the
importance of names for historical periods:
How did the early Jesuits, about whom I was
writing a book, fit the categories of “Counter
Reformation” and “Catholic Reformation”? I
gradually came to the conclusion that those
two terms, the most widely used, were inad-
equate and sometimes misleading as designa-
tions for what the early Society of Jesus was
about. . . . I came to see, moreover, that such
terms, even when accompanied by disclaim-
ers, were not simple labels, for they acted as
implicit questions and implicit categories of
interpretation. They thus subtly directed at-
tention to some issues and away from others,
highlighted certain phenomena and cast oth-
ers into the shadows, admitted some evidence
but filtered out the rest.  (2–3)
227
If we accept the idea that labels act as con-
theories  and methodologies
ceptual filters, what issues are highlighted
and what phenomena recede to the margins
of our attention when we use early modern
instead of Golden Age?
We might begin with beginnings. While
Golden Age focuses our attention on the re-
discovery of classical learning, early modern
favors other precipitating factors for demar-
cating a new age: political (the consolidation
of monarchical power), social (urbanization
and demographic growth), and technologi-
cal (the introduction of the printing press).
The analogies between our own experience of
an information revolution and its fifteenth-
­century counterpart go a long way in explain-
ing the recent boom in studies on printing,
literacy, readership, and libraries. With good
reason, medievalists have objected for some
time to the view that the sixteenth-­century
Renaissance in Spain marked a sharp break
with the past; a shift in focus from cultural
rediscovery to technological innovation, how-
ever, will do little to correct the tendency to
overlook continuities with the practices and
productions of the late medieval period.1
But endings can have even more signifi-
cant implications. Golden Age, as suggested
earlier, ironically reverberates with a teleology
of crisis and decline: after becoming a great
artistic and political power, Spain declined,
first politically, then artistically; the society
that enthusiastically embraced Erasmism, hu-
manism, and critical inquiry closed itself off
(at a disputed chronological moment of cri-
sis) from the northern winds of religious tol-
erance and reason; the expansive confidence
of the Renaissance gave way to the zero-­sum
game of the baroque; and the experimental
freedom of the Renaissance was replaced by
the disciplinary propaganda of the state.2
Early modern comes with its own implicit
categories of interpretation—namely, that the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were pre-
ludes to modernity. As Jeremy Robbins explains,
this idea is sometimes met with resistance:
 228 Golden Age or Early Modern: What’s in a Name?
The designation “early modern” implies a view
theories  and methodologies
of Spain during the Golden Age not always ac-
cepted, especially by non-­Hispanists, namely
that it was undergoing a decisive move toward
modernity in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It is undeniable, however, that the
culture of Golden Age Spain was produced
during a protracted period of intense trans-
formation which saw intellectual, social, and
religious certainties gradually challenged and
eventually changed by the Protestant Reforma-
tion of the sixteenth century and the scientific
and philosophic revolutions of the seven-
teenth. This process may have been slower in
Spain than in some countries, but it occurred   culturally belated periphery of the Spanish
nevertheless. (“Renaissance” 137–38)
Such a view can be tough to sell to non-
­H ispanists (and even to some Hispanists)
if they are accustomed to thinking of Spain
as a culture locked in the grip of Counter-
­Reformation Catholicism. But standing out
in Robbins’s elegant statement are two con-
cepts that might encourage such readers to
see Spain in terms of an early modernity sui
ge­ne­ris: uncertainty and protraction. Robbins
asks us to see in Spain not the stubborn cliché
of Spanish belatedness (according to which
the fires of religious fervor were not tem-
pered until the dawn of the nineteenth cen-
tury) but a protracted response to religious
and epistemological uncertainties. Ironically,
developments in eighteenth-­century studies
outside Spain may have made it easier to see
a seventeenth-­century Spanish move toward
secularization. In the last fifteen years, the
traditional consensus that equated moder-
nity with secularism and secularism with
the abandonment of religion has been seri-
ously challenged. It is now widely accepted
that religion was an essential component of
intellectual and social life in the period of the
Enlightenment (Sheehan; Midelfort). If we
think of secularization not as the rejection of
religion but as the acceptance of a world less
permeable to supernatural intervention (but
spiritually porous nonetheless), then new pat-
[  P M L A
terns of thought become visible. It is possible
to read Cervantes’s hagiographic indifference
and thaumaturgic skepticism not simply as
remnants of a defeated Erasmism but as signs
of a stronger barrier between the natural and
the supernatural.3 We can begin to approach
Cal­de­rón’s casuistry or Baltasar Gracián’s no-
tion of prudence from a new perspective—not
as a vestige of an exhausted scholasticism but
as an anticipation of a worldview in which
God is more distant and his designs more
inscrutable.4 Another irony is that interdisci-
plinary scholarship on the supposedly more
empire has brought to light an array of devel-
opments—in cartography, economics, natural
history, and philosophy—that, if they do not
constitute scientific revolutions per se, rep-
resent epistemological transformations with
important implications for how we under-
stand the enigmas of secularization and mo-
dernity (see Padrón; Vilches; Ewalt; and Hill
on these respective topics).
If the bimodal, Renaissance-­b aroque
Golden Age is encumbered with a narrative of
rebirth and decline, early modern entices with
a different kind of teleological temptation. The
move toward modernity may have been deci-
sive in Spain, but it was also uneven and beset
by detours and retreats. As is true for other
European cultures (but perhaps more so for
Spain), the narrative of a lockstep march from
a religious to a secular worldview is not con-
vincing.5 How do we reconcile Philip IV’s pen
pal Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda, who alleg-
edly exhibited bilocation on two continents,
with a narrative of seventeenth-­century secu-
larization or the development of early mod-
ern feminism? Janet Todd’s caveat regarding
the history of feminism is apropos here: we
must resist the temptation to “avoid listening
to a past that might be annoying through its
resolute refusal to anticipate us” (46).
Thinking like an early modernist in-
stead of a Golden Age specialist also has re-
percussions for the way we teach and design
126.1   ] Alison Weber
curricula. Early modern implies a broader
chronology, extending from the late 1470s
to the late 1700s; it calls for familiarity with
trends in history, anthropology, religion, and
economics; it requires a more capacious defi-
nition of culture; and it asks for a geographic
range commensurate with the Spanish em-
pire.6 How can we incorporate this expanded
range in the same fourteen-­week semester
without sacrificing the time we now dedicate
to exploring the aesthetic achievements of
specific texts? What would it mean to begin
an “early modern” course reading Celestina
(1499) not as the crowning achievement of
medieval literature but as a masterwork “at
the threshold of modernity” and then to close
the semester with Benito Jerónimo Feijoo’s
1739 essay debunking demonic possession
(“De­m o­n ía­c os” [“Demoniacs”]) or Josefa
Amar y Borbón’s 1786 Discurso en defensa del
ta­lento de las mugeres (“Discourse in Defense
of the Talent of Women”)?7 With such revised
syllabi, would we risk trading a narrative of
splendor lost for an equally skewed Whig-
gish view of history? Some will find such
challenges exhilarating while others will find
them daunting—or see them as an invitation
to dilettantism. In my department, a col-
league and I have accommodated ourselves to
this dilemma by wearing two hats. As Golden
Age specialists, we teach courses on Don Qui-
jote and Golden Age drama in which we give
precedence to close reading and discussions of
structure and themes, without excluding con-
textual issues. But as early modernists we also
teach courses that cross traditional chrono-
logical, geographic, and disciplinary bound-
aries: 1492 and Its Aftermath, The World of
Cervantes, The Inquisition in Spain and Latin
America, and The Creation of Feminist Con-
sciousness, 1450–1800. Our anxieties about
venturing into new disciplinary territory have
been eased somewhat since colleagues from
other departments have generously accepted
invitations to lecture on areas of their exper-
tise. We have considered replacing the tradi-
229
tional surveys, which treat peninsular and
theories  and methodologies
Latin American literature in separate courses,
with a team-­taught transatlantic survey, but,
deterred by the usual obstacles involved in
team-­teaching, we have not yet implemented
this proposal. Other departments have un-
doubtedly found different ways to negotiate
curricular change, taking into consideration
the intellectual interests, expertise, and com-
position of their faculties.
The last of the three questions posed at
the beginning of this essay is whether replac-
ing Golden Age with early modern will attract
a broader audience of non-­Hispanists. I doubt
I am alone in grumbling when I pick up a
monograph or collection of essays claiming
to treat a topic in “early modern Europe” and
discover that Spain is mentioned only glanc-
ingly or not at all. It would appear that the
slogan of the Franco-­era tourism board—“Es­
paña es diferente” (“Spain is different”)—has
been all too successful. Golden Age advertises
Spain’s difference, but at what cost? Does an
air of exoticism attract readers or give them
permission to ignore our subject as periph-
eral? (Given the lack of a clear rationale for
using Golden Age or early modern in current
book titles, there seems little consensus on
this matter in the marketing departments of
university presses.) It is doubtful, however,
that a wider use of early modern in itself will
attract a new audience to Hispanism. Others
probably have shared the frustration I have
experienced when after deliberately organiz-
ing a panel around three complementary na-
tional perspectives, I have seen the discussion
period devolve into separate conversations
on the speakers’ subspecialties. For good or
ill, people seem most interested in subjects
they already know something about. I predict
that Hispanism will have a better seat at the
table when non-­Hispanists know more about
Spain. This may happen, ironically, because
of the reputation of Spanish as the practical,
as opposed to culturally prestigious, language
for students to study. But Spanish is no ­longer
 230 Golden Age or Early Modern: What’s in a Name?
the default language for the mediocre or re-
theories  and methodologies
luctant student. When I was a graduate stu-
dent at the University of Illinois in the early
1970s, students petitioned to do away with the
language requirement because, they argued,
learning a foreign language was irrelevant.
We have come a long way since then. When
I began teaching at the University of Virginia
in the early 1980s, we had around 17 Span-
ish majors; now over 150 majors graduate
each year in the department. More students
are beginning their university careers ready
and eager to take courses beyond the four-
­semester language requirement. And it is not
just courses such as Translation or Business
Spanish that are oversubscribed; students also
vie to get into courses on Islamic Iberia and
modernist poetry.
A similar transformation may be occur-
ring in history departments. A friend of mine
recounted that when he was an undergraduate
at Brown in the late 1970s and enrolled in a
course on medieval history, Spain appeared no-
where on the syllabus. When he asked the rea-
son for this omission, the professor apologized
by saying that it was because he didn’t know
anything about medieval Spain—no courses on
the topic had been offered during his years in
graduate school. But again there are signs of a
change. The history department of the Univer-
sity of Virginia recently hired its first Hispan-
ist since Julian Bishko, one of the pioneers of
Spanish history in the United States, retired—
in 1977. Now that there are more undergradu-
ates studying Spanish, more bilingual students
in colleges and universities, and more PhDs in
Hispanism, one can hope that more history de-
partments will consider early modern Iberia an
important area of specialization.
Students are also much more cosmopoli-
tan than they were twenty-­five years ago: they
are more likely to have traveled abroad and to
have Spanish-­speaking friends. Most of our
majors—and a good number of nonmajors—
spend at least a summer, but more often a se-
mester, studying in Spain; they return with
[  P M L A
firsthand experience of Spain as a modern,
post-­C atholic, European democracy, and
they are often curious to learn about its non-
democratic, imperial, Catholic past. It is to be
hoped that some of these students will go on
to become, if not scholars of European history
and literature, at least informed readers with
the inquisitiveness necessary to make Spain
part of the cultural and historical framework
of educated Americans.
As Hispanists we must do our part. At
a time when comparative literature depart-
ments are in danger of elimination, we must
be prepared to take up the slack by offering
comparative perspectives. We might include
more books and articles on European history
and other literatures in our graduate syllabi,
ask students to read a play by Shakespeare
alongside one by Lope de Vega, contrast the
idea of prudence in Blaise Pascal and Gra­
cián, think about the question of honor in
Pierre Corneille and Calderón, or compare
the feminism of Laura Cereta, Marguerite de
Na­varre, and Teresa of Ávila. We might en-
courage graduate students to take at least one
course outside the department.
I do not advocate abandoning Golden
Age entirely. Its continued use is reasonable in
certain contexts: when the study focuses on
the formal qualities of a writer, a school, or a
literary genre; when the writers under exami-
nation raise questions regarding Spain’s role
in the transfer of classical learning and impe-
rial power; when a narrative of rebirth and
exhaustion is more convincing than one of
transformation and modernization.8 But when
the object of study requires attention to popu-
lar as well as elite cultural expressions, to the
production of literature in its social and ma-
terial contexts, or to mentalities of the longue
du­rée or hints at responses to the uncertain-
ties that portend secularization, early modern
is a more appropriate designation. It would
be unfortunate, moreover, if Golden Age be-
came a dead metaphor of the kind O’Malley
describes above or an anodyne synonym for
126.1   ] Alison Weber
early modern. If we continue to use Golden
Age, the question of who enjoyed the period’s
splendor, happiness, and justice—and who
was excluded from it—cannot be ignored.
Notes
I am grateful for comments and suggestions from Ri-
cardo Padrón, Michael Gerli, Anne J. Schutte, Daniel
Wasserman, and Eric Graf. Unattributed translations in
this essay are mine.
1. Space does not permit a more detailed consider-
ation of how the concept of early modernity reinforces
the questionable notion that a great divide separated the
Middle Ages from the sixteenth century. Crucial discus-
sions include Bennett and the essays in the special issue
of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies edited
by Summit and Wallace. Scholars have also found that
topics in women’s history and gender history such as
queenship and regency, female monasticism, mysticism,
the querelle des femmes, and marriage and the family
require more flexible chronological brackets than those
implied by Golden Age and early modern. The essays in
the volume edited by Earenfight offer a good example of
how women’s history has challenged the idea of a chasm
between medieval and early modern mentalities.
2. The work of Maravall has been influential in pro-
moting baroque as a period appellation for the seventeenth
century. For this historian of mentalities, the baroque rep-
resented a conservative backlash against the egalitarian
developments of the previous century. Among historians,
Ka­men has led the way in consistently challenging the
notion of Spain’s benightedness (esp. ch. 5, “The Myth of
the Inquisition” [126–49], and ch. 7, “The Myth of Per-
petual Decline” [172–205]). Robbins similarly deplores an
“intellectual black legend” that has resulted in the neglect
of Spain’s seventeenth-­century contributions to the philo-
sophical revolution of early modern Europe (Arts 3).
3. On Cervantes’s modernity, see Graf.
4. For a recent study on casuistry in the comedia, see
Kallendorf. On the secularization of prudence in Gra­
cián, see Robbins, Arts, esp. 142–56.
5. Robbins (Challenges and Arts) and Elliott provide
excellent examples of scholarship that successfully incor-
porates inconsistent and nonlinear developments into a
narrative of modernization. Such uneven developments
also occurred north of the Pyrenees, where the culture of
the Enlightenment did not put an end to witch hunts or
exorcisms. See, e.g., Midelfort.
6. Despite the fact that between 1580 and 1640 this
empire also included Portugal, the implications of an
Iberian (as opposed to a Spanish) early modernity have
231
yet to attract extensive scholarly attention. Fox is a no-
theories  and methodologies
table exception.
7. Celestina and the Threshold of Modernity was the
title of a summer seminar for college teachers at the Uni-
versity of Virginia in 2009, led by Michael Gerli and spon-
sored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
8. Ironically, in the two genres of this period most
studied today there is a marked irreverence toward clas-
sical culture. The picaresque novel turned auctoritas on
its head, and Lope de Vega famously quipped that if play-
wrights wanted to be successful, they needed to lock away
the classical unities (133).
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