The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain: The Arcipreste de Talavera and the Spill (Cambridge Studies in Latin American and Iberian Literature, Series Number 10)

The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain examines the medical underpinnings of two major misogynist works from the 15th-century Iberian: Alonso de Martínez's Arcipreste de Talavera and Jacme Roig's Spill. Michael Solomon argues that these works gain their persuasive force by linking concerns over health and illness with men's behavior toward women. Solomon shows how the demonization of women in medieval society was more than vaguely cultural; it was a legitimate aspect of the healing arts, considered vital to the well-being of men. Frontmatter Acknowledgments (page vii) Introduction: The preacher and the physician (page 1) PART ONE: DISEASE AND THE MEDIEVAL CLINIC 1 Disease, discourse, and illness: The structure of healing in late medieval Spain (page 17) 2 Sexual pathology and the etiology of lovesickness (page 49) PART TWO: THE ARCIPRESTE DE TALAVERA AND THE SPILL 3 The poetics of infection (page 67) 4 The poetics of the compendium and the conditions of the clinic (page 94) 5 The tortured body and the abjectified voice: Additional therapeutic strategies (page 124) PART THREE: THE TRIUMPH OF THE CLINIC 6 Women, the power to disease, and the fictions of the Counter-Clinic (page 149) Notes (page 175) Work cited (page 199) Index (page 217) The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain examines the medical underpinnings of two major misogynist works from the fifteenth-century Iberian: Alonso de Martinez's Arcipreste de Talavera and Jacme Roig's Spill. Michael Solomon argues that these works gained their rhetorical force by linking concerns over health and illness with men's behavior toward women. Solomon shows how the demonization of women in medieval society was more than vaguely cultural; it was part of the healing arts, considered vital to the well-being of men. This book examines the medical underpinnings of two major misogynist works from fifteenth-century Iberia: Alonso de Martinez's Arcipreste de Talavera and Jacme Roig's Spill. Solomon shows how the demonization of women in medieval society was viewed as legitimate and vital to the well-being of men.