The spectacular city, Mexico, and colonial Hispanic literary culture / Stephanie Merrim.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-353) and index.

Agile platforms of the spectacular city: the new world and the old -- Order and concert -- Balbuena's "La grandeza mexicana" and the advent of the spectacular city -- Balbuena's spectacular city and the Creole cause -- Engaging plurality: Baroque plenitude and the spectacular city in Mexico -- "To know the all": the spectacular esoteric city in Mexico -- Babe : wild work of the new world Baroque -- Appendix. Chronology of principal works.

Stephanie Merrim offers a dynamic interdisciplinary approach to colonial Hispanic writing based on the spectacular city, a model that encompasses three driving forces of New World literary culture: cities, festivals, and wonder. [This book] tracks the three spectacular forces from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, from the Old World to the New, and from Mexico to Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. It treats a multitude of imperialist and anti-imperialist texts in depth, including poetry, drama, protofiction, historiography, and journalism. While several of the landmark authors studies, including Hernán Cortés and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, are familiar, others have received remarkably little critical attention. Similarly, in spotlighting creole writers, Merrim reveals an intertextual tradition in Mexico that spans two centuries. Because the spectacular city reaches its peak in the seventeenth century, Merrim's book also theorizes and details the spirited work of the New World Baroque. The result is the rich examination of a trajectory that leads from the Renaissance ordered city to the energetic revolts of the spectacular city and the New World Baroque. Bringing anthropology, art history, education, history, literary theory, theology, and urban studies to bear on its subjects, The Spectacular City with be essential reading for students and scholars of colonial Latin America. --Back cover.