For Miguel de Cervantes, to narrate a Mediterranean experience is to necessarily speak of an emotional experience. Affective Geographies takes as its point of departure the premise that literature is as influential in constructing the Mediterranean as are its geographic, climatic, or economic features. As the writer with the most vast and varied Mediterranean experience of his era, Cervantes is exceptionally well-suited for the critical task of recovering the literary Mediterranean.
Engaging with the interdisciplinary fields of Mediterranean studies, affect theory, and the history of emotion, Paul Michael Johnson reads Cervantes's texts alongside the affective structures that inscribe the Mediterranean as a space of conflict, commerce, expansion, and empire. In particular, he argues that Cervantes's writing, with its uncommon focus on the Moorish, Islamic, and North African experience, can serve to realign misconceptions about the Mediterranean we have inherited today. Affective Geographies proposes that, with a more than four-hundred-year history of impacting the hearts and minds of readers, Cervantes's works constitute a literary longue duree, ramifying beyond fiction to alter the popular imaginary and long-term cultural landscape.
By:
Paul Michael Johnson
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 159mm,
Spine: 24mm
Weight: 580g
ISBN: 9781487507510
ISBN 10: 1487507518
Series: Toronto Iberic
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 19 February 2021
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Part One: Casting Off 1. Introduction 2. Connected (Hi)stories: The Cervantine, Literary, and Affective Mediterranean The Historical Mediterranean The Literary Mediterranean The Affective Mediterranean Contesting a Sea of Discourses Deviations from Reason in a Sea of Diversity Part Two: Quixotic Passages 3. Shadows of the Inquisition: Honour, Shame, and a Cervantine View of Mediterranean “Values” Anthropologies of Mediterranean Honour and Shame Visual Topographies of Shame Shame Punishments and Cervantes Blood Purity and the Art of Infamy in Don Quijote’s Encagement Conclusion 4. A Mediterranean (Tragi)comedy: Sancho, Ricote, and the Emotional Politics of Laughter Gelotological Genealogies The Emotional Effects of Laughter, and Laughter as Affect Sancho and Schadenfreude, or Courtly Comedics From Sadism to Satire Laughing with Sancho and Ricote Conclusion Part Three: Other Ports of Call 5. Suspended Admiration: Wonder, Surprise, and Emotional Exemplarity in La española inglesa Aesthetics of the Unexpected Early Modern Cultures of Suspension Tempering Fears, Tempering Sails 153 Ethical Solutions through Admiratio Conclusion 6. Aporias of Love: Articulating the Ineffable in Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda Beyond Sentimentalism Aporias Ineffability Materiality Conclusion Afterword Notes Bibliography Index
Paul Michael Johnson is an associate professor of Hispanic Studies at DePauw University.
Reviews for Affective Geographies: Cervantes, Emotion, and the Literary Mediterranean
"""Johnson is adept at distinguishing the portrayal of the inwardness and interiority of Cervantine characters from counterparts in 19th-century European realism. A highlight of the volume—one of many—is discussion of the encounter, in part 2 of Don Quixote, of Sancho Panza and the Morisco Ricote as a source of commentary on humor. Analyzing feelings is a challenge. Johnson has done his homework and far more. His approach to the Mediterranean takes the reader all over the map of criticism, metacriticism, interdisciplinarity, and the Cervantine corpus."" -- E. H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University * <EM>CHOICE</EM> * ""This fascinating and original scholarly contribution to Early Modern literary studies – presented with an exquisite written expression – not only invites readers to reconsider many canonical works by Miguel de Cervantes, but also helps to lay the groundwork for a new direction of scholarly inquiry into a wide array of classical fiction."" -- Philip Allen, Midwestern State University * <em>Hispanófila</em> *"
- Winner of 2020 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award The American Political Science Association Canadian Po 2020 (United States)
- Winner of 2020 Seymour Martin Lipset Best Book Award The American Political Science Association Canadian Politics Section 2020 (United States)
- Winner of 2022 Outstanding Acedemic Title awarded by Choice 2022 (United States)
