Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a significant number of Spanish soldiers wrote autobiographical accounts that reflected their experiences in the Hispanic monarchy. Arms and Letters explores how these soldiers adapted the concept of honor and contributed to the burgeoning autobiographical form. Harden argues that Spanish military life writing took two broad forms: petitioning for service as a debt of honor and staging honor as a spectacle. Honor was gendered and performative, serving as a metric of value for early modern men and women.

Format: Hardback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 10 November 2020
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Arms and Letters delves into an extraordinary collection of autobiographical accounts penned by Spanish soldiers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These firsthand retrospective narratives offer a diverse range of experiences within the vast realm of the Hispanic monarchy. By examining a selection of autobiographies within the contemporary historical context, including the emergence of the first modern armies, which were partially composed of forced recruits and urban poor, Faith S. Harden sheds light on how soldiers adapted the concept of honor and played a significant role in the flourishing autobiographical genre. Harden posits that Spanish military life writing took two distinct forms: the first as a petition, where the soldiers' service was portrayed as a debt of honor, and the second as a series of misadventures, where honor was staged as a captivating spectacle for an audience.

Honor, inherently gendered and performative, served as a fundamental measure of value applied by early modern men and women to themselves and others. Arms and Letters contributes to a critical genealogy of honor and to the history of life writing by exploring how non-elite subjects legitimized their lives through autobiography.

Weight: 478g
Dimension: 161 x 238 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487507046