The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture

PREFACE

Warm thanks go to my expert and attentive editor, Theresa May, and to everyone else who contributed to the book’s production ; to Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Nina M. Scott for invaluable suggestions on the manuscript; to Sara Snider for exquisitely proofing it; and especially to the friends, students, colleagues, and family who have sustained me and my work over the years. The memory of my sister, Andrea Goff Merrim, is a living inspiration. Another inspiration came from Anna Turner, who in a graduate seminar long ago asked a question that sparked the book’s conceptual framework. More recently, the young students in my First-Year Seminar at Brown in the fall of 2008 gave me faith that the spectacular cities of this book and those of the Hispanic colonial period in general can have a vibrant life in the present. To foster that life, I present all quotations in English, supplying only most poetry and theatrical dialogue in both Spanish and a fairly literal prose translation in English. Throughout, most translations are mine. However, where possible and appropriate I have cited published translations and provided page references to both the originals and the translations listed in the bibliography. In all cases, the italicized page number refers to the published translations, which occasionally have been slightly and silently modified to a more accurate or literal expression. All cited translations of Sor Juana’s work derive from Alan S. Trueblood’s A Sor Juana Anthology. To further facilitate comprehension of the book, a chronological list of the principal works that The Spectacular City discusses appears at the end of the text. Previously published portions of this book include my “Spectacular Cityscapes of Baroque Spanish America,” as cited in the bibliography, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.; “The Work of Marketplaces in Colonialist Texts on Mexico City,” Hispanic Review 72, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 215–238, Copyright © 2004 Trustees of the UniPR E FAC E viii The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture versity of Pennsylvania, reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press; “Sor Juana Criolla and the Mexican Archive: Public Performances,” Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empire, Texts, Identities, ed. Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti, 193–218 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2009), reprinted by permission of the Omohundro Institute and the University of North Carolina Press; also, “La grandeza mexicana en el contexto criollo,” Nictimene sacrílega, ed. Mabel Moraña and Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, 81–97 (Mexico City: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, 2003). The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...