The first part of the book is an able survey of 'the Enlightenment’ in eighteenth-century Spain. The second part, on ’the Revolution,’ is something more. Originally published in 1958. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Includes bibliographical material and "Review."

In eighteenth-century Spain, just as in Britain and France, the term 'Enlightenment' implied both a spirit of criticism and the dissemination of new scientific and philosophical modes of thought. But in Spain this new way of thinking also required the incorporation of ancient epistemologies, in particular, practices and ideas concerning the healing, training, and experience of the body. In Embodying Enlightenment , Rebecca Haidt investigates this distinctly Spanish fascination with the cultural construction of bodies during the Enlightenment, particularly masculine bodies. Haidt interlaces a host of disciplines in her analysis of key works of eighteenth-century literature and art, including medical treatises, visual imagery, poetry, and erotica. She then traces the classical knowledge that informed the literature of the gendered, medicalized, and politicized male body in eighteenth-century Spanish culture. What results is an original and revealing study of the body in Spanish culture and thought, and a new look at the Spanish Enlightenment from a very unique angle.

Drawing on the groundbreaking Spanish scholarship and editions of earlier generations and relying on research conducted in Spanish archives, this pioneering group of English-speaking scholars offers a new treatment of familiar material. The editors yoke together widely varying critical practices, including incisive New Critical readings and far-reaching explorations that draw on the most current European critical thought. In addition to these more strictly literary studies, there are interdisciplinary essays focusing on seventeenth- and twentieth-century reception and the social makeup of the comedia audience. The whole thus presents a balanced picture of the many ways in which the comedia can be viewed, and the contributors complement each other's work in often surprising ways, illuminating the same corpus from a number of perspectives.