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Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain. By scott k. taylor. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $55.00 (cloth).
Spain is not so different after all. That is one of the principal messages of this book, which deftly weaves together evidence from a variety of sources to examine honor as it was understood by ordinary people in a seventeenth-century Castilian town. Historians, literary critics, and anthropologists have long held fast to the idea that Spanish culture was fundamentally different from that of the rest of Europe, drawing in part on the evidence of Golden Age plays that centered on honor, shame, and vengeance. Scott Taylor insists that the representation of honor in these plays was an anomaly and that Spanish culture fits in very neatly with the rest of early modern Europe in terms of its perceptions of honor and conflict. To support this argument, he draws together and skilfully interprets evidence relating to literature, law, gender, violence, and judicial systems, creating a much broader and more nuanced picture of the role of honor in early modern Spain.
The quantity and popularity of Golden Age plays have made them a rich source for scholars of Spain, and the "honor plays," such as Pedro Calderón de la Barca's The Physician of His Honor, have attracted particular attention for their emphasis on sex and vengeance. Taylor argues that historians have taken these plays too literally in their portrayals of Spain as "a uniquely violent, honor-obsessed country" (p. 3). He turns instead to evidence from criminal court records to illustrate how people originated and resolved conflicts, and supplements these with records relating to royal pardons, dueling and fencing, confessors' manuals, and the notes of legal commentators. These sources together provide a combination of ideals and examples of how Spaniards across the social spectrum perceived and performed the expectations of honor.
Taylor's study breaks down the theme of honor into chapters on dueling, the...