Material Girls and Imperial Fashions: the Circulation of Ideologies and Commerce in the Hispanic Enlightenment Open Access

Abstract

Abstract Material Girls and Imperial Fashions: The Circulation of Ideologies and Commerce in the Hispanic Enlightenment In my dissertation I examine how and to what extent women's material culture functions in debates on utility and morality in encyclopedic texts from Spain and Spanish America. By "encyclopedic text" I am referring to works that follow certain parameters: a trend of collecting, organizing, and disseminating a broad knowledge base with explicit or implicit didactic aims. Encyclopedias are gold mines for political jabs and heated debates that were grounded in particular socio-economic circumstances. The debate regarding women and material fashions is a far-reaching argument but the encyclopedia entries and histories I analyze are specifically located geographically. The scope of my project is trans-Atlantic and I employ this approach to uncover the ways in which the polemic on women's material culture is articulated in a Hispanic global eighteenth century. The primary text that serves as the backbone of my project is the Encyclopedia Metódica which was published in Spain by a successful publisher named Antonio de Sancha from 1788-1794. Other texts I discuss in the dissertation are the Viaje a la América Meridional by Spaniards Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, the Rusticatio Mexicana by creole Jesuit Rafael Landívar, the Teatro critico universal by Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, and the Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí by the chronicler Bartolomé Arzáns. I suggest that the authors I focus on use the material figure of women as a kind of measurement to prove or criticize the advancement of reason in particular geographic areas. Women were represented as inherently connected to materiality and because of this they were bound to socio-economic critiques that described them as both necessary for economic development and as potentially harmful with the potential to disrupt social and moral order through excess luxuries and seductive fashions.

Through analyzing the representation of women's materiality in rationalist discourse I am able to illustrate a fraught connection between material and intellectual production that enriches our understanding of the Hispanic eighteenth century.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1
Material Geographies: Madrid and Lima as Cities of Governance and Luxury

Velasco, Julián de. "Madrid." Encyclopedia Metódica.

Juan, Jorge and Antonio de Ulloa. "Descripción y noticias de la ciudad de Lima, capital del
Perú y asiento de sus virreyes, su admirable planta, capacidad, grandeza y majestad de sus
tribunales" and "Del numeroso vecindario que contiene la ciudad de Lima, sus castas, genio
y costumbres, de sus habitadores, riqueza y ostentación de sus trajes." Viaje a la América
Meridional.

Chapter 2
The Fabric of Progress: Textiles, Dyes, and the Circulation of Economic Prestige

Carbonel, Antonio de. "Paños" and "Encajes." Encyclopedia Metódica.

Landívar, Rafael. "Cochineal and Purple." Rusticatio Mexicana.

Chapter 3
Articles and Articulations of Women's Fashions

Carbonel, Antonio de. "Sastres y Cotilleros" and "Modas, Modista." Encyclopedia
Metódica.

Chapter 4
Women's Bodies Revealed, Disruption in Potosí and Spain

Feijoo y Montenegro, Benito Jerónimo. "Declamación contra las modas escandalosas de las
mujeres, en carta de Teófilo a Paulina." Teatro Crítico.

Arzáns de Orsúa y Vela, Bartolomé. "En que se cuenta un extraño hecho de una mujer
abrasada de terribles celos, y asimismo se cuenta los daños que se acarreó el poco recato de
una doncella, su trágica muerte y encuentros sangrientos que por esto se aumentaron en esta
villa." La Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí.

Afterword

Bibliography

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Spanish
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Romance Language, Modern History, Modern
Keyword	women 18th Century material culture Hispanic
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Stolley, Karen, Emory University
Committee Members	Donato, Clorinda, California State University, Long Beach Feldman, Hernan, Emory University Gold, Hazel, Emory University

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