The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain: The Arcipreste de Talavera and the Spill

The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain examines the medical underpinnings of two major misogynist works from the 15th-century Iberian: Alonso de Martínez's Arcipreste de Talavera and Jacme Roig's Spill. Michael Solomon argues that these works gain their persuasive force by linking concerns over health and illness with men's behavior toward women. Solomon shows how the demonization of women in medieval society was more than vaguely cultural; it was a legitimate aspect of the healing arts, considered vital to the well-being of men.

"Unique and impressive, beautifully researched, and elegantly written....Strongly recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty." E.H. Friedman, Choice

"...solid and illuminating sociocultural study....Solomon's study provides a much-needed social and historical foundation on which to begin to formulate critical antidotes to the bitter medicine of misogyny in medieval Spain." Barbara F. Weissberger, Revista de Estudios Hispanicos

"One can only hope that other contemporary texts will find the same lucid attention that Solomon allots to these two." Elizabeth Rhodes, Speculuma Journal of Medieval Studies

An examination of two fifteenth-century misogynist Iberian works.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: the preacher and the physician; Part I. Disease and the Medieval Clinic: 1. Disease, discourse, and illness: the structure of healing in late medieval Spain; 2. Sexual pathology and the etiology of lovesickness; Part II. The Arcipreste de Talavera and the Spill: 3. The poetics of infection; 4. The poetics of the compendium and the conditions of the clinic; 5. The tortured body and the abjectified voice: additional therapeutic strategies; Part III. The Triumph of the Clinic: 6. Women, the power to disease and the fictions of the counter-clinic; Notes; Works cited; Index.