Modernidad bajo sospecha: Salas Barbadillo y la cultural material del Siglo XVII (review)

García Santo-Tomás fills a longstanding gap in the field of early-modern Spanish literary studies with a monographic study of Alonso Jerónimo Salas Barbadillo (1581–1635). This successful and prolific writer has not attracted sustained scholarly attention in the last century, despite the fact that he remained at the literary epicenter of Madrid throughout his life. In part, this neglect reflects a fundamental logistical challenge—and enticing opportunity—that faces those who study this period: a dauntingly large number of prolific and important literary figures circulated an astounding number of works. Indeed, García Santo-Tomás reminds us of the density of literary Madrid. Right after the court's return in 1606, Lope de Vega, Salas Barbadillo, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, and Suárez de Figueroa settled in Madrid. In the second decade of the seventeenth century, Antonio Mira de Amescua, Luis de Góngora, the Conde de Villamediana, Francisco de Quevedo, Guillén de Castro, and the Príncipe de Esquilache were active. Yet funding for research and publication has focused studies on a small number of the most canonical writers and works of this period. One hopes this book's publication signals a commitment on the part of the CSIC to issue more monographs on stillneglected writers or movements.

As he begins, García Santo-Tomás warns that his book will not follow the chronological trajectory typically found in single-author monographs, but rather, will unfold through a thematic organization that reflects the complications inherent in Salas Barbadillo's corpus. Specifically, the sheer number of works and the frequent time lapse between composition and publication complicate precise chronology. A major advantage that follows from this thematic organization is that a reader can engage the five chapters in sequence or treat them as individual essays. Those who want a chronological road map for this study may turn first to the epilogue, which outlines Salas's literary significance following a more traditional "life and works" framework. These different parts make the study well suited for specialists, advanced graduate students, or comparatists.

Chapter 1, "Fetiches e idolatrías en la cultura áurea," begins by pondering the different canonical labels scholars have given Salas, of which the most prominent are costumbrista and satirist. Whatever category we choose, the writer's protagonism in court literary circles was undeniable. He issued mordant observations of daily life and social types in the villa y corte in his prose; participated in high-profile literary academies, including that of the Count of Saldaña; and served as an usher (ujier) in the queen's chambers during the 1620s. After providing this overview of the writer and his era, the chapter considers Spain's "viaje hacia la modernidad" in the first half of the seventeenth century. A particularly eloquent example of the "suspicion" of the title appears as García Santo-Tomás discusses a scene from the 1614 novella, El caballero puntual, in which the title character catches sight of a section of Madrid's decaying medieval walls (35).

Motifs signaling modernity's fraught arrival likewise shape Chapter 2, "Nuevos ambientes, nuevos vocabularios," which considers a broad array of Salas's works in relation to urbanization. In one particularly compelling passage, García Santo-Tomás notes how El sagaz Estacio, marido examinado (1620) distills the period's urban expansion by presenting a landscape defined by rented coaches, actors, and prostitutes, which he interprets as signposts of ambivalence towards rapid change. In stylistic terms, he notes how these anxieties echo in a fragmentation of the narrative. The chapter also includes analysis of how melancholy pervades such works as El caballero puntual, El cortesano descortés (1621), El necio bien afortunado (1621), El malcontentadizo (1622), and Don Diego de noche (1623).

Chapter 3, "Academias, parnasos y el discurso culinario como crítica," focuses on Salas in terms of his engagement with literary academies...