Culture Of The Baroque: Analysis Of A Historical Structure (theory And History Of Literature) (english And Spanish Edition)

Once upon a time, it was possible to make an audience chuckle by saying that history is no longer what it used to be. Everyone understood this amphibological use of the term history, which was called upon to mean both the representation of past events and the actual course of these events; and, whereas it was generally accepted that differing and multiple representations are possible, perhaps even desirable, the actual course of past events could only be singular and have the immutability of a fate accomplished. Today, the same statement would no longer elicit similar mirth. Not only are we all too aware of the constant manipulation and rewriting of history that is one of the hallmarks of our age, whether for reasons that we may find as abhorrent as Orwell did, or, on the contrary, that we may approve of as in the new histories that no longer omit the fate and the feats of women: but we are also becoming more conscious of the determinant role played by the discourse of the historian upon the representation of history that results from this discourse. Among historians, the work of Hayden White is preeminently concerned with this problem, while among literary scholars, the poststructuralists have used it to challenge the very possibility of historical cognition. History, as an academic enterprise, is being haunted with something that it thought it had exorcised at its very beginnings. For, as Arnaldo Momigliano reminded us recently, the oldest chairs of history in Europe were created in the sixteenth century when the chairs of letters at the universities of Gottingen and Leiden were split into two different chairs, reflecting and instituting the perceived difference between letters and history. 1 There is thus an irony, even a historical vii FOREWO RD viii FOREWORD xii FOREWORD xvi FOREWORD xviii FOREWORD xx PREFACE xxxiv To know a historical reality, to grasp its meaning, is to make intelligible PREFACEXXXV the relation between the parts and the whole, in those complexes that constitute the object of history. This presupposes that coming to know facts never gives us absolutely objective facts, but processes of observation in which, first, the facts end up being greatly altered and, second, more rests upon such facts than we find in pure facts (or data): that is, an interpretive theory. But the theory that the historian constructs, applying his or her observation to a field that the theory itself previously constituted, is the mental image of a complex or is simply the complex whose parts have been related to one another through the observer's interpretation. In my 1958 book this is what I called structure; the concept served as a substitution for such similar terms as series, formations, laws, and ideal types, which other researchers had previously tried out, although, in my opinion, they were unsatisfactory for the historian. "Historical facts are not things; their reality vis-a-vis history as a science is their position in a process of relations. The formulation of this position has the value of a law and can be considered as a law when it gives us the position of all and each one of the facts in relation with all the others." Let me clarify that all here makes reference, as the book explains, to all the facts selected by the historian, to the extent that he or she has drawn them from a mass of facts that cannot in itself be grasped. Formulations of this type are not those corresponding to the classical concept of law; formulations arrived at in this way are different, more complex, and do not repeat themselves. For these reasons, at that time I used the term structure. "Historical structure is for us the figure -or mental construction -in which we are shown a complex of facts endowed with an internal articulation wherein the intricate network of relations taking place between such facts is systematized and acquires meaning." But the intricate network of relations cannot take place without the intervening observation of the historian. The French Revolution is not a single fact, nor is it thousands of facts, if in them we fail to become aware of the nexus relating them to one another in a structural complex. On the other hand, "whenever a complex is offered to us as a totality distinct from the succession of its data, we are in the presence of a structure." 1 Twenty years after having used the concept of structure as the basis for my conception of historical work, and more than fifteen years after publishing the work where this conception is advanced, I consider myself fully authorized to utilize it in designating an interpretive construction that faithfully adapts itself to those theoretical assumptions. Before 1958, few used the word structure to designate concepts, more or less related, in the realm of theory in the humanities and social sciences (it was, of course, used in mathematics and chemistry). In linguistic and anthropological research it appeared early but its diffusion was PREFACE xxxvi INTRODUCTION BAROQUE CULTURE AS A CONCEPT OF EPOCH9 Contents......Page 6 Foreword: The Changing Face of History......Page 8 Translator's Introduction: The Translating Mechanism......Page 22 Preface......Page 33 Introduction: Baroque Culture as a Concept of Epoch......Page 42 I. THE CONFLICTIVE NATURE OF BAROQUE SOCIETY......Page 56 1. Social Tensions and the Consciousness of Crisis......Page 58 II. THE SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE CULTURE......Page 94 2. A Guided Culture......Page 96 3. A Mass Culture......Page 118 4. An Urban Culture......Page 143 5. A Conservative Culture......Page 165 III. ELEMENTS OF A BAROQUE WORLD VIEW......Page 186 6. The Image of the World and Human Being......Page 188 7. Fundamental Concepts of the Worldly Structure of Life......Page 212 IV. BAROQUE SOCIETY AND THE MEANS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS......Page 244 8. The Technique of Incompleteness......Page 246 9. The Social Role of Artifice......Page 264 Appendix: Sociopolitical Objectives of the Use of Visual Media......Page 290 Notes......Page 306 A......Page 358 C......Page 359 D......Page 360 G......Page 361 J......Page 362 M......Page 363 N......Page 364 P......Page 365 R......Page 366 T......Page 367 W......Page 368 Z......Page 369 Contents 6 Foreword: The Changing Face of History 8 Translator's Introduction: The Translating Mechanism 22 Preface 33 Introduction: Baroque Culture as a Concept of Epoch 42 I. THE CONFLICTIVE NATURE OF BAROQUE SOCIETY 56 1. Social Tensions and the Consciousness of Crisis 58 II. THE SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF BAROQUE CULTURE 94 2. A Guided Culture 96 3. A Mass Culture 118 4. An Urban Culture 143 5. A Conservative Culture 165 III. ELEMENTS OF A BAROQUE WORLD VIEW 186 6. The Image of the World and Human Being 188 7. Fundamental Concepts of the Worldly Structure of Life 212 IV. BAROQUE SOCIETY AND THE MEANS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS 244 8. The Technique of Incompleteness 246 9. The Social Role of Artifice 264 Appendix: Sociopolitical Objectives of the Use of Visual Media 290 Notes 306 Index 358 A 358 B 359 C 359 D 360 E 361 F 361 G 361 H 362 I 362 J 362 K 363 L 363 M 363 N 364 O 365 P 365 Q 366 R 366 S 367 T 367 U 368 V 368 W 368 X 369 Y 369 Z 369 Maravall focuses on the beginnings of Spanish Baroque mass culture as it developes in 17th century Spain and the role culture plays in the formation of the modern state in relationship to other western European contries José Antonio Maravall ; Translated By Terry Cochran ; Foreword By Wlad Godzich And Nicholas Spadaccini. Translation Of: La Cultura Del Barroco. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 267-316.