Politics of Communication: Writing, Gender, and Royal Authority in the Spanish Empire (1556-1665)

Abstract

This dissertation prompts us to revisit our ideas about the politics of the Spanish empire by providing a picture of a world in which women influenced politics through their petitions, and a world in which affection, nurturing, and feminine ideals were part of the monarchy’s political power. Ideas about the Spanish monarchy’s obligation to listen to its subjects provide this different picture of politics in the Spanish empire. While multiple studies have pointed out that the ideal of communication was a prominent feature of royal authority in early modern monarchies, scholars have not fully investigated how this idea affected the process of politics and the social life of the period. This dissertation finds that the king’s obligation to listen to his people transformed the pleas of women’s petitions into relevant political matters by allowing women to hold the king accountable to his duties. This dissertation also argues that the expectation for communication placed feminine ideals on the power and authority of the king by requiring him to listen to and to nurture his people. The monarchy’s obligation to fulfill these duties shaped the perimeters of what the monarchy could and could not do, shaped the standing of subjects in the empire, and subjects’ obligations to the monarchy. Looking at how the ideal of communication affected the monarchy and its people provides a new point of departure from which to consider moments of discord and harmony in the trajectory of the Spanish empire.