French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Merle and A. Guillaume-Alonso (eds.), Les Voies du silence dans l'Espagne des Habsbourg
History, Politics and Society
Bibliographic reference: Alexandra Merle and Araceli Guillaume-Alonso (eds.), Les Voies du silence dans l'Espagne des Habsbourg, Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, collection "Iberica - publication en français", 2013. EAN13: 9782840508984.
Alexandra Merle and Araceli Guillaume-Alonso (eds.), Les Voies du silence dans l'Espagne des Habsbourg, Paris, PUPS, 2013, coll. "Iberica" no. 27, 387 p., 25 euros.
Book Overview
This volume examines an image frequently associated with the Habsburg era and linked to the anti-Spanish "Black Legend": that of a Spain forced into silence, where any dissent was actively combated and punished to the detriment of intellectual progress.
The book offers a detailed analysis of the concept of silence in Spanish thought, its representations in the arts and literature, and the mechanisms through which silence was recommended or imposed. However, the study also demonstrates how attempts to enforce silence were sometimes subverted, how they even produced unexpected effects by stimulating creativity, and how they gave rise to appropriation strategies to "turn silence to one's advantage." Finally, moving beyond this rhetoric of circumvention, to what extent was it possible to break the silence in Habsburg Spain? The contributions trace the emergence and expansion of a space for critique, which over the course of the Habsburg reign evolved into a public sphere offering increasingly wide avenues for transgression.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Francis Wolff (ENS-Ulm)
What is silence the absence of?
Thinking Silence: Reflections and Representations
Michèle Estela-Guillemont (University of Lille III)
"El silencio es útil a toda persona cristiana". Reflections on silence in the 16th century.
Frédéric Gabriel (CNRS, UMR 5037)
Silence of the skull. A hypothesis for a theology of silence in images.
Encarnación Sánchez García (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale)
The rhetoric of silence in Carthusian circles during the Hispanic Baroque.
Elena Cantarino (University of Valencia)
From the silence of reason to the reasons for silence. Considerations toward a theory of silence in the Baroque era.
Fátima Halcón (University of Seville)
The representation of silence in the Baroque era: Reflections in Spanish art.
This collection of essays situates the study of silence within the complex historical landscape of Golden Age Spain. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish Empire under the Habsburgs was often caricatured by foreign rivals through the Black Legend as a monolithic, oppressive state dominated by censorship. By examining the theological, artistic, and philosophical dimensions of silence, this volume challenges such simplistic views. It demonstrates that silence was not merely a passive response to authority, but a multifaceted tool used by writers, artists, and religious orders like the Carthusians to navigate and critique the spiritual and political landscape of the Baroque era.
The book addresses crucial questions about how intellectual and artistic expression can survive and even thrive under restrictive regimes. It explores how the enforcement of conformity paradoxically stimulated creative subversion, allowing writers and artists to develop sophisticated strategies of coded communication. Scholars and students of early modern European history, Spanish literature, and Baroque art history will find this work highly valuable. It offers deep insights into the evolution of a critical public sphere in Spain, showing how the very mechanisms of control ultimately fostered new avenues for intellectual transgression and debate.