Discourses of Empire: Counter-Epic Literature in Early Modern Spain

2 “So That the Rulers Might Sleep Without Bad Dreams”: Imperial Ideology and Practices

1. Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army (London: Cape, 1974). 2. Raffaele Puddu, El soldado gentilhombre (Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1986), 11. “So That the Rulers Might Sleep Without Bad Dreams” Imperial Ideology and Practices As Philip Mason has observed, imperialist societies require an ideology that permits both the colonizer and the colonized to accept imperial power relations as the natural order—an ideology that provides restful nights for the rulers.1 Conventional analyses of early modern Spanish society and its cultural formations interpret the post-Tridentine period as an era characterized by a monolithic, universal affirmation of Spain’s role as the “Defender of the Catholic Faith.” Historian Raffaele Puddu’s viewpoint, similar to that of José Antonio Maravall, allows no room for dissent. Puddu asserts, “el espiritú público castellano se caracterizaba por el respeto a las tradiciones, la ortodoxia, y el principio de autoridad” (the public spirit of Castile was characterized by respect for tradition, orthodoxy, and the principle of authority) and that “la cultura era utilizada como sostén del absolutismo y de la Contrarreforma” (culture was used to support absolutism and the Counter-Reformation).2 Contemporary cultural critics have undermined such visions of historical periods as monolithic entities and have reformulated the process of cultural inquiry to include the study of oppositional discourses—not only in order to argue that “radical” texts sometimes 15 2 constituted a significant threat to dominant political formations but also, and more importantly, to gain a fuller understanding of the historical and cultural processes through which hegemonies constitute and defend themselves . This study of counter-epic literary reinscriptions of imperialist discourse can thus be seen as an attempt to identify the poetic and dramatic modes through which a denaturalization of early modern Spain’s hierarchical and imperial power relations was given voice.3 In this chapter, I will focus upon the political, juridical, and theological contexts in which counterepic examinations of imperial practice circulated. Literary critics have begun to trace the relationship between negative early modern literary representations of European aristocracy and imperialism and the shift from the warrior nobility of the feudal era to the effeminate courtiers of absolutist regimes. In Hapsburg Spain, as in early modern England and France, advances in military technology during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries led to a transformation of the function of the nobility from a feudal warrior class to the “service” aristocracy of the court—and to discourses that characterized this new form of nobility as feminized.4 At the opposite pole, commentators also criticized the excess desire for glory that prompted unwise military actions. Juan Luis Vives specifically linked heroic narrative and the negative aspects of Spanish imperialism, blaming the exaltation of martial values in epic and romance for the illegitimate wars of conquest engaged in by contemporary military leaders to win glory.5 Although the emerging merchant class posed less of a threat in Spain than in other parts of Europe, it produced additional opportunities and anxieties connected to imperialism’s commercial dimensions (Lombardo, “Fragments and Scraps,” 213). A related but unique element of early modern Spanish history is the social instability created by wealthy indianos, whether criollos or peninsulares, who returned to Spain after long, profitable sojourns in the New World. These peruleros upset the mercantilist colonial economy (upon which all of Spain’s imperial ventures depended for financial support) by their economic activities in Seville, by engaging in direct trade both with Spanish producers and with other European countries , and by flooding the Spanish economy with silver.6 Discourses of Empire 16 3. Jan P. Nederveen Pieterse, Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale (New York: Praeger, 1989), 252. 4. Larry Clarke, “‘Mars His Heart Enflamed with Venus’: Ideology and Eros in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida,” Modern Language Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1989): 211. 5. David Quint, Epic and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 5. 6. John Lynch, Spain Under the Habsburgs, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 2:214. Throughout Spain’s “Golden Age,” an extended debate was waged not only among political advisors and secretaries, jurists, and theologians but also among poets, dramatists, and novelists concerning the legality, morality , and relative advantages and liabilities of imperialist practices.7 This chapter, after providing an overview of imperial activity during the reigns of Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV, will utilize recent historical studies...