Illuminates life in the feudal society of colonial Mexico

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Contents

I. A Baroque Archbishop-Viceroy     1
II. The Baroque Age     21
III. A Baroque Society     37
IV. Literary Migrants     53
V. Scenes, Writers, and Reading, 1620     70
VI. The Strange Case of the Curious Book Collector     85
VII. The Inquisition and a Play     99
VIII. A Mascarada     117
IX. Tournaments of Poetasters     130
X. Some Curiosities of Baroque Verse     145
XI. On the Book Trade, 1683     157
XII. A Baroque Poetess     172
XIII. A Baroque Scholar     193
XIV. A Summing Up     215

Notes     229

A Brief Bibliography     145

Description

This book opens a window on a forgotten and glorious time---the life of colonial Mexico. Here is the color of that era in a mosaic of life—a worldly ambitious archbishop, a beautiful nun-poetess, a Creole scholar torn between faith and scientific learning, poetasters, inquisitors—and in the background, the first glimmers of Mexican nationalism. Baroque in its intricate pattern of caste and custom, rich with silver pouring from its mines, the feudal society of Old Mexico lives in this account of a vanished time.