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17 pages, 275 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Dark Side of Things: Praxis of Curiosity in La silva curiosa (Julián de Medrano 1583)

by Mercedes Alcalá Galán

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 100; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050100 - 28 Apr 2025

Viewed by 147

Curiosity lies at the heart of the sixteenth-century miscellany books, which served as precursors to the essay genre. Among them, a truly exceptional piece stands out: La silva curiosa by Julián de Medrano, published in 1583. This work pushes the boundaries of curiosity [...] Read more.

Curiosity lies at the heart of the sixteenth-century miscellany books, which served as precursors to the essay genre. Among them, a truly exceptional piece stands out: La silva curiosa by Julián de Medrano, published in 1583. This work pushes the boundaries of curiosity to such an extent that it challenges its classification within the genre of miscellany owing to its unconventional and strange nature. Julián de Medrano, the author of this outlandish work, transforms himself into a character and protagonist, defining himself as an “extremely curious” individual. During his extensive travels, he curates a collection of “curious” epitaphs associated with often comical and peculiar deaths, spanning Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Galician, and Italian. In addition to this, La silva curiosa includes an autobiographical narrative, a precursor to the Gothic genre, in which Medrano recounts unsettling encounters with black magic. This work offers a multifaceted exploration of curiosity, taking it to the extreme by narrating the author’s life experiences driven by a relentless pursuit of the curious, which is synonymous with the bizarre, extraordinary, marvelous, and unexpected. La silva curiosa emerges from a time marked by an almost nihilistic void, as the full force of the Baroque era has not yet arrived, and the ideals of humanism are fading away. It stands as a unique document that unveils an unexpected facet of the concept of curiosity within Spanish Renaissance culture. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

12 pages, 219 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Leo Africanus Curiously Strays Afield of Himself

by Steven Hutchinson

Humanities 2025, 14(5), 95; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14050095 (registering DOI) - 22 Apr 2025

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Abstract

The word “curiosity” has an opaque history with contradictory attitudes and connotations acquired ever since Antiquity. This poses an interesting problem in the case of Leo Africanus, who never uses the word in his Cosmographia de l’Affrica yet exhibits curiosity at every turn [...] Read more.

The word “curiosity” has an opaque history with contradictory attitudes and connotations acquired ever since Antiquity. This poses an interesting problem in the case of Leo Africanus, who never uses the word in his Cosmographia de l’Affrica yet exhibits curiosity at every turn as a traveler and a writer. This essay relies on a distinction that Michel Foucault makes regarding types of curiosity: that which produces conventional knowledge (which he rejects) and that which seeks extraordinary knowledge that “enables one to get free of oneself”, resulting in “the knower’s straying afield of himself”. Both as a traveler and a writer, Michel de Montaigne demonstrates that such an attitude was a living reality in sixteenth-century Europe. Montaigne’s many reflections on his “straying afield of himself” provide a bridge to interpreting Leo Africanus’s practices of traveling and writing. Leo’s profession as a diplomat, his economic expertise and his training as an Islamic legal expert all led to his far-reaching journeys, particularly in Islamic Africa but also Asia as of a young age, bringing about his many encounters with historical figures and events while also granting him access to uninhabited nature, as well as every sort of human settlement, from remote villages to great cities. His will to knowledge—curiosity that leads him to ‘stray afield of himself’ by seeking out the unusual and the unknown—proves to be the key to his travel and his writing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

12 pages, 233 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Colors of Curiosity: Ekphrasis from Marguerite de Navarre to María de Zayas’ Tarde llega el desengaño

by Frederick A. De Armas

Humanities 2025, 14(4), 85; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14040085 - 9 Apr 2025

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Abstract

María de Zayas’ Tarde llega el desengaño, the fourth tale in her Desengaños amorosos (1641), is one of the most studied novellas in the collection. The reader’s curiosity may stem in part from the main model for the tale, the Apuleian story [...] Read more.

María de Zayas’ Tarde llega el desengaño, the fourth tale in her Desengaños amorosos (1641), is one of the most studied novellas in the collection. The reader’s curiosity may stem in part from the main model for the tale, the Apuleian story of Cupid and Psyche, which has curiositas as its central motivation. Nevertheless, this essay argues that one of the reasons that the tale has attracted so much attention has to do with the vividness of its scenes, the chromatic design that Zayas uses to write for the eyes and the relationship of these topics to curiosity. The text induces characters and readers to marvel not only at a colorful scene but also to seek to understand the choice of colors in eight impacting ekphrasis in the novella. These colors color emotions and arouse our curiosity regarding scene, symbol, shade, and character. In addition, Zayas alludes to a painting included in one of Marguerite de Navarre’s novellas to further arouse curiosity and visual memory. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

12 pages, 252 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Restless Nature

by Susan Byrne

Humanities 2025, 14(4), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14040077 - 27 Mar 2025

Viewed by 153

Abstract

During the Spanish Renaissance, curiosity was the catalyst for change and creativity. Earlier philosophical stories regarding the perils and pitfalls of curiosity, written by Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus, were adapted to a quite positive end: human creativity in letters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

13 pages, 296 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Curiosity and Artifice in Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Natural Philosophy

by Javier Patiño Loira

Humanities 2025, 14(3), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030054 - 7 Mar 2025

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Abstract

I examine the strategies through which Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a professor at Madrid’s Jesuit Reales Estudios, promoted the role of curiosity in natural philosophy. I argue that Nieremberg responded to anti-curiosity criticism by restating how the two primary meanings of “curiosity” in early [...] Read more.

I examine the strategies through which Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, a professor at Madrid’s Jesuit Reales Estudios, promoted the role of curiosity in natural philosophy. I argue that Nieremberg responded to anti-curiosity criticism by restating how the two primary meanings of “curiosity” in early modern sources, “intellectual desire” and “diligence”/“care”, should relate to one another. By analyzing a set of works published in both Spanish and Latin between 1629 and 1635, I demonstrate that Nieremberg advocated a form of “curiosity” (in the sense of longing for knowledge) focused on what he called “nature’s artifice”, which constituted a specific facet of God’s “curiosity” (in the sense of attention or care in creation). In 1633, Nieremberg claimed that nature is nowhere more deserving of wonder than when it imitates art, actively challenging the way we understand the art–nature divide. I show that, by contrasting a superficial or external approach to nature with one that penetrates it in search of what is “artificial” about it, Nieremberg’s efforts at defining a virtuous and legitimate form of natural-philosophical curiosity involved re-negotiating the boundaries between natural philosophy and more ambivalent competing realms, such as aesthetics, rhetoric, and the occult sciences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

22 pages, 338 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Trembling Curiosity: Sex and Desire in El curioso impertinente and Carne trémula

by Bruce R. Burningham

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020033 - 14 Feb 2025

Viewed by 761

Abstract

There is a longstanding connection between “curiosity”, “desire”, and “sexuality”. This connection can be found in texts as diverse as works of scripture like the Hebrew Bible and the Quran as well as in contemporary works of critical theory. Miguel de Cervantes explored [...] Read more.

There is a longstanding connection between “curiosity”, “desire”, and “sexuality”. This connection can be found in texts as diverse as works of scripture like the Hebrew Bible and the Quran as well as in contemporary works of critical theory. Miguel de Cervantes explored such a connection more than four centuries ago in El curioso impertinente, an exemplary novella embedded in the 1605 part one of Don Quixote. Through a comparative reading of Cervantes’s El curioso impertinent, Pedro Almodóvar’s 1997 film Carne trémula (itself a free adaptation of Ruth Rendell’s 1986 novel Live Flesh), and Luis Buñuel’s 1955 film Ensayo de un crimen, this essay analyzes the intersection of curiosity and desire—inflected through the lenses of both Girardian and Lacanian theory—in order to explore the fundamental role not just of curiosity in early modern Spain, but also in the representation of modern (and postmodern) sexuality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

19 pages, 3110 KiB

Open AccessArticle

(Il)legible Orthodoxy: Diligence and Impertinence Before Inquisitorial Curiosity

by Kathryn Phipps

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020032 - 12 Feb 2025

Viewed by 610

Abstract

This article proposes the Spanish Inquisition as a site of productive conflict between the polyvalent significations of curiosity in early modern Spain. On one hand, the Spanish Inquisition promoted curiosity through diligent inquiry, while on the other it prosecuted those whose curiosity led [...] Read more.

This article proposes the Spanish Inquisition as a site of productive conflict between the polyvalent significations of curiosity in early modern Spain. On one hand, the Spanish Inquisition promoted curiosity through diligent inquiry, while on the other it prosecuted those whose curiosity led them to impertinence. This article examines the significance of an archival curiosity whose dubious relevance within the archive highlights its fundamental illegibility before Inquisitorial curiosity. This article argues that despite an ethos of apparent orthodoxy and cryptic invitations to curious readers, the manuscript ultimately fails to prompt Inquisitorial inquiry and itself becomes designated as “Escrito curioso por su valor caligráfico” by an unidentified archivist. Impertinent as an archival misfit and insolent in its failure to adhere to standards of confession, the “Escrito curioso’s” playful provocations invite a diligent reader to peruse its depths, only to find obstinate opacities nestled within the umbrage of orthodoxy. Ultimately, the article contends that the “Escrito curioso” ironically elucidates the Inquisition’s paradoxical dependence upon the heretical curiosity it condemned. As a diligent expression of undying faithfulness to the Church and her Inquisition, it is relegated to the forgotten margins of the Holy Office’s operations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

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11 pages, 230 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“Curiosa Impertinente”: Women and Curiosity on the Spanish–North African Borderlands

by Catherine Infante

Humanities 2025, 14(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14020028 - 7 Feb 2025

Viewed by 642

Abstract

In European imaginings of the Islamic world, women incited intense curiosity and were often depicted by early modern writers as sexualized subjects and curious objects of male desire. However, this Orientalist fascination ignores the very curiosity of these women and their desire to [...] Read more.

In European imaginings of the Islamic world, women incited intense curiosity and were often depicted by early modern writers as sexualized subjects and curious objects of male desire. However, this Orientalist fascination ignores the very curiosity of these women and their desire to glean knowledge about the world around them. While curiosity became increasingly valued in the early modern period as a means of progress, female curiosity was still often linked to the perils of excess (Neil Kenny). This essay examines this apparent contradiction by focusing on the Muslim protagonist in one of Miguel de Cervantes’s plays that takes place on the Spanish–North African borderlands. In Los baños de Argel (1615), Zahara defends her desire to inquire about the world by portraying herself as a “curious impertinent” (“curiosa impertinente”), a name that clearly recalls the tale of “El curioso impertinente” intercalated in the first part of Don Quixote (1605). Moreover, Zahara harnesses her ability to ask questions to further her goals and ambitions. Ultimately, through a close reading of the female protagonist in this play, I argue that Cervantes considers the ways in which women asserted their own curiosity and represented themselves as agents of inquiry. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Curiosity and Modernity in Early Modern Spain)

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