Fluent Essays

Please answer the following questions. Make sure the response is at least 7 pages and no longer than 8 pages long in total. Please make sure there is a clear thesis as well as a conclusion for each question. Attempt to make the response somewhat chronological as well. Also, please do not use any outside or online sources/material and only use the files/sources that are provided. Cite using MLA format.Question 1(Life is a Dream)1. Provide a very short summary of the plot (no more than half a page).2. Tell me what the salient themes in this literary work are.3. Analyze two or three of these themes and explain how they reflect the culture, values, politics, social and economic structures of early modern Spain. You are using these texts as primary sources. Therefore, your use of them should answer the question: What do they tell you about the history of Spain?4. Place these works within a specific historical contextQuestion 2(Use Spanish Society/any other provided sources)What happened to Spain in the early seventeenth century? Was there a decline? What was the nature of the decline? What were the causes of the collapse of Spain? Knowing what you do about the reforms of the catholic Monarchs, why did Spain almost disintegrate in 1640? Illustrate your points with specific examples from sources. Think critically. life_is_a_dream.pdf teofilo_f._ruiz___spanish_society__1348___1700_routledge__2017___1_.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Spanish Society, 1348–1700 Beginning with the Black Death in 1348 and extending through to the demise of Habsburg rule in 1700, this second edition of Spanish Society, 1348–1700 has been expanded to provide a wide and compelling exploration of Spain’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Each chapter builds on the first edition by offering new evidence of the changes in Spain’s social structure between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. Every part of society is examined, culminating in a final section that is entirely new to the second edition and presents the changing social practices of the period, particularly in response to the growing crises facing Spain as it moved into the seventeenth century. Also new to this edition is a consideration of the social meaning of culture, specifically the presence of Hermetic themes and of magical elements in Golden Age literature and Cervantes’s Don Quijote. Through the extensive use of case studies, historical examples and literary extracts, Spanish Society is an ideal way for students to gain direct access to this captivating period. Teofilo F. Ruiz is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His previous publications include A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain (2012), Spain, 1300–1469: Centuries of Crises (2007), Medieval Europe and the World (2005) and From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (2004). Spanish Society, 1348–1700 Second Edition Teofilo F. Ruiz Second edition published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Teofilo F. Ruiz The right of Teofilo F. Ruiz to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Pearson Education Limited 2001 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ruiz, Teofilo F., 1943– author. Title: Spanish society, 1348–1700 / Teofilo F. Ruiz. Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016055547 | ISBN 9781138957862 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138999053 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315180960 (ebook : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Spain—Social conditions—to 1800. | Spain—Social life and customs. | Spain—History—711–1516. | Spain—History— House of Austria, 1516–1700. | Social classes—Spain. Classification: LCC HN583 .R85 2017 | DDC 306.0946—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016055547 ISBN: 978-1-138-99905-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-95786-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-18096-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC To Sir John H. Elliott ¡Qué amigo de sus amigos! ¡Qué señor para criados y parientes! ¡Qué enemigo de enemigos! ¡Qué maestro de esforçados y valientes! ¡Qué seso para discretos! ¡Qué gracia para donosos! ¡Qué razón! ¡Qué benigno a los sujetos y a los bravos y dañosos, un león! Jorge Manrique Contents List of tablesix Preface to the second editionx Preface to the first editionxiv Acknowledgementsxvi Introduction: from medieval to early modern 1 PART I The geographical and political setting9 1 The making of Spain 11 PART II A society of orders43 2 Those who have not: peasants and town dwellers 45 3 Those who have: nobility and clergy 77 4 On the margins of society 104 PART III The structures of everyday life131 5 Festivals and power: sites of inclusion and exclusion 133 6 From Carnival to Corpus Christi: festivals of affirmation 155 7 The burdens of violence: sites of conflict 176 8 Resisting violence: the wrath of the poor 202 viii Contents 9 The patterns of everyday life: eating and dressing 10 The patterns of everyday life: religion, honour, sexuality and popular culture 224 248 PART IV Culture and society in an age of decline269 11 Spain under the late Habsburgs: society in an age of crisis I 271 12 Spain under the late Habsburgs: society in an age of crisis II 290 Conclusion 310 Appendix I: chronology of events, 1348–1700316 Appendix II: glossary of terms320 Bibliography323 Index336 Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 9.1 City population in early modern Spain63 The population of Seville, 1384–159465 A typology of urban social groups in Seville66 Changes in trades in Barcelona, 1516–171770 Summary of caloric intake of Spanish sailors in the early seventeenth century235 Preface to the second edition Preface to the second edition of Spanish society, 1348–1700 The first edition of Spanish Society, 1400–1600 appeared more than a decade and a half ago in 2001. Since then, there have been many important works on the social history of early modern Europe and of late medieval and early modern Spain. My own work has changed dramatically over that period of time and, although I still think that my book has held its own over the period since its first publication, clearly, there are many things I would do quite differently today. Over the course of my long career, I have written many books to the chagrin of trees and to the well-being of insomniacs. Of all the books I have written, however, Spanish Society has always been, and remains, my favourite. When I wrote it towards the end of the twentieth century, I was able to work on both sides of the chronological divide (the dreaded 1492) and to argue against the rigid distinctions between medieval and early modern. The book also allowed me to draw from literature and to use culture as a means to understand social structures and the social meaning of cultural artefacts. As such, though profoundly anchored in social history, the first edition of Spanish Society, 1400–1600 sought to integrate culture into social developments. Liking the original so much, I am a bit reluctant to admit that a highly revised second edition is necessary. One’s own sense of possession of one’s work and the illusory sense that the works one writes are truly enduring (which of course they are not) may lead me to attempt only a cosmetic reassessment of my 2001 efforts. This is not the case here, and over the years I have come to realise that a somewhat longer and different book, while not discarding what was accomplished in the first edition, was necessary. Chronology, geography, culture and religion: Spain in a global society Chronology I should begin with the most obvious change in the nature of this second edition, that is, changes in the chronological span of the book. In the first Preface to the second edition xi edition, I was constrained by the dates dictated by the demands for a series on social history for which my Spanish Society, 1400–1600 was just one of the volumes commissioned by the general editor of the series. Although I sought to provide some background for the period before 1400, as well as to go well beyond 1600 and to illustrate some discreet aspects of social change with historical vignettes drawn from before and after those chronological boundaries, the results were not always satisfactory. Clearly, the sweeping impact of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the end of Alfonso XI’s reign in 1350 (the only king to die from the plague in Western Europe and to maintain some semblance of order in Castile during the turbulent fourteenth century), the rising tide of violence against religious minorities and myriad of other developments had an important impact on the social structures of peninsular kingdoms. These developments need to be explicated in greater detail if one is to make sense of social change in the later centuries. The first edition chronological terminus, 1600, coincided roughly with an important landmark, the death of Philip II in 1598, widespread epidemics throughout Iberia and economic decline. Nonetheless, for the next hundred years, the Habsburgs still ruled in the different Spanish kingdoms. Clearly, the seventeenth century witnessed the almost break-up of the Spanish monarchy in 1640, military defeats in the Low Countries and elsewhere in Central Europe, the rise of France, the Dutch republic and, to a lesser extent, England (all three enemies of Spain) as the hegemonic power(s) in Western Europe. The seventeenth century also observed the final settlement of religious warfare but without any real gains after more than a century of war. The troubled (almost tragic) end of the Habsburg dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula in 1700 triggered new social issues. We cannot see the development of new attitudes towards social groups or the rise of religious sensibilities unless we understand the political and cultural context of the long seventeenth century. It was, after all, a general European crisis that affected Spain as much as it did the rest of the continent. The War of Spanish Succession, the coming of a Bourbon dynasty to rule Spain in the eighteenth century and beyond signalled a new period in Spain’s (now truly Spain as a centralised monarchy to the detriment of traditional autonomies and liberties) institutions, economy and social life. Two new concluding chapters (Chapter 11 and 12) address mostly seventeenth century issues and what I may call the social and cultural history of a society in crisis. Geography Although the first edition aimed at examining Spanish society in the wider context of the expansive Spanish world, the reality is that the main thrust of my arguments and of the historical issues examined focused mostly on the Iberian Peninsula. Since 2001, world history and a global approach to historical phenomena have transformed the manner in which we study the xii Preface to the second edition past. In the case of Spain, the first global empire, this is even more pertinent. While writing a social history of the entire Iberian world would yield a book very different from the original one, I hope to extend slightly the geographical boundaries of my inquiry in this second edition. Although, as I note, writing a social history of the entire Spanish world is beyond the scope of this work and beyond my abilities, then or now, I would like to draw more information from other areas of the Spanish Empire (and then monarchy after 1556). After all, natives in the New World were a significant part of the Spanish social structure. Conversos in Mexico or Cuzco, as Nathan Wachtel has shown, were also part of that world in ways that were similar, and yet distinct from those of the peninsula. Similarly, the Spanish enclaves in North Africa, Oran, Ceuta, Melilla and elsewhere had different social histories than those in the metropolis. Conversos and Moriscos played important roles in North Africa as translators and interlocutors that would have been inconceivable in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain. Jews were welcome in these North African enclaves while barred from the peninsular kingdoms. And then, there are the issues of Spaniards in Rome, Naples, Milan and elsewhere. Whether they were part of the heavy footprint of Spanish administration and religious life in Italy, or living on the margins as Conversos and Jews in the Roman (and Venetian) ghettoes, they were also part of Spain’s outreach to the outside world. And we find Spaniards in the Low Countries and in Germany either as administrators, merchants or soldiers. They carried with them elements of Spanish culture into different parts of the world, but they also borrowed important cultural tools from the diverse contexts in which they lived and worked, and then brought that back to Spain. Culture and religion Although the first edition of Spanish Society is filled with literary references and deploys literary texts as a way to understand social relations and structures, I neglected to deploy other cultural forms that reflected specific social issues. For example (a topic to be explored in greater detail in a new chapter), in seventeenth century Seville, as Amanda Wunder shows in a recent book, in the midst of growing political, economic and social crises, the leading citizens of Seville invested in the building of churches, in the decoration of religious sculptures, religious painting and similar pious enterprises. What did such activities mean in the context of Spanish society? What did the emphasis on vivid representations of blood and suffering so intensely depicted in Baroque Spain mean for the social and cultural history of early modern Spain? Similarly, although I address the clergy as one of the orders in Spanish society, I did not pay enough attention to religion as an institution that helped shaped the contours of Spanish society. In Spain and the Iberian world, religion played an important role, not just in the spiritual life of the Preface to the second edition xiii Spanish population but also in the manner in which social relations were constructed. Religion pervaded the very fabric of society and shaped the manner in which the dominant religion – Catholic Christianity – related to the world at large and to other religious groups in their midst – Protestants, Jews, Muslims. Thus, religion played a fundamental role in the forging of social differences, artistic production, while also influencing political decisions and foreign policy. Finally, Chapter 12, a new concluding chapter focuses on two discreet topics. The first addresses the nature of culture in seventeenth century Iberia as a context for the decline of Spain and the troubled rule of the late Habsburgs in the peninsula. By presenting a case study of the role of magic, Hermeticism and other cultural tropes in the social life of Spanish people, I attempt to see how these esoteric forms of knowledge pervaded the life of Spaniards on both sides of the Atlantic, and modified the growing austerity of seventeenth century Catholic doctrine. The second is the unavoidable issue of decline and the growing awareness by statesmen and the learned that “disillusionment” had become an important aspect of their world. Spain in a global society As much as I am able to do so, I would like to place some of the developments in social history within a global context. Spain was the first truly global empire, and peninsular social norms were replicated throughout its vast possessions beyond the sea. Royal and princely entries, a topic we explore with a great deal of detail in chapters below, were replicated by viceroys and episcopal entries in Mexico City, Cuzco and elsewhere throughout the empire. The Inquisition in Mexico and in Peru also found Conversos allegedly practising Judaism. In time, the Inquisition would come to monitor the beliefs of natives, found to have relapsed into their ancestral practices. While there were important differences and geographical contexts, there was continuity in social practices (if one wishes, as I do, to think of religion as a social practice) throughout the vast arc of Spanish lands around the world. Preface to the first edition For far too long ‘social history’ was regularly, even routinely defined dismissively and negatively along the lines of ‘history with the high politics, economics and diplomacy left out’. Over the latter decades of the twentieth century, however, a virtual revolution in the sub-discipline of ‘social history’ gathered momentum, fuelled not only by historians but also by specialists from such established academic disciplines as anthropology, economics, politics and especially sociology, and enriched by contributors from burgeoning cultural, demographic, media and women’s studies. At the cusp of the twenty-first century, the prime rationale of the recently launched ‘Social History of Europe’ series is to reflect the cumulative achievement and reinforce the ripening respectability of what may be positively yet succinctly defined as nothing less than the ‘history of society’. Initiated by the late Professor Harry Hearder of the University of Wales, the ‘Social History of Europe’ series is conceived as an ambitious and openended collection of wide-ranging general surveys charting the history of the peoples of the major European nations, states and regions through key phases in their societal development from the late Middle Ages to the present. The series is not designed to become necessarily either chronologically or geographically all-embracing, although certain pre-eminent areas and periods will demand a systematic sequence of coverage. Typically, a volume covers a period of about one century, but longer (and occasionally shorter) time-spans are proving appropriate. A degree of modest chronological overlap between volumes covering a particular nation, state or region is acceptable where justified by the historical experience. Each volume in the series is written by a commissioned European or American expert and, while synthesising the latest scholarship in the field, is invigorated by the findings and preoccupations of the author’s original research. As works of authority and originality, all contributory volumes are of genuine interest and value to the individual author’s academic peers. Even so, the contributory volumes are not intended to be scholarly monographs addressed to the committed social historian but broader synoptic overviews which serve a non-specialist general readership. All the volumes are therefore intended to take the ‘textbook dimension’ with due seriousness, Preface to the first edition xv with authors recognising that the long-term success of the series will depend on its usefulness to, and popularity with, an international undergraduate and postgraduate student readership. In the interests of accessibility, the provision of notes and references to accompany the text is suitably restrained and all volumes contain a select bibliography, a chronology of principal events, a glossary of foreign and technical terms and a comprehensive index. Inspired by the millennial watershed but building upon the phenomenal specialist progress recorded over the last quarter-century, the eventually multi-volume ‘Social History of Europe’ is dedicated to the advancement of an intellectually authoritative and academically cosmopolitan perspective on the multi-faceted historical development of the European continent. Raymond Pearson Professor of Modern European History University of Ulster Acknowledgements In the more than a decade and a half since the writing of the first edition, my debt to those mentioned in my earlier acknowledgment has only increased. Here I reproduce the language found in my acknowledgements in 2001. Clearly, some of those mentioned below have made additional contributions to my understanding of Spanish history. Other scholars have made significant contributions to my work since 2001, and their insights have played an important role in how I perceive the period and how I write about it. Richard Kagan’s invaluable contributions to the questions of festivals and local government deserve a place of honour, so have been the contributions of the late and much missed Olivia Remie Constable. I have learned a grea ... Purchase answer to see full attachment