SPAN 45.04 Under the Influence. Intoxicating Goods and Vicious Texts from Early Modern Spain
This course will explore the encounter with America in 1492 that radically transformed the Spanish marketplace. Previously unknown culinary delicacies, beverages and other novel intoxicating items from the New World (such as tobacco and chocolate) took Spaniards' forms of consumption and consumerism to a new level. These novelties introduced in the Spanish diets and habits reinforced attitudes of orientalism towards America, and by the same token, shaped the Spanish identity and taste in new ways. We will concentrate on practices of intoxication that include, but are not limited to, sniffing tobacco, drinking excessive amounts of chocolate, and eating indigestive clay for cosmetic purposes. We will study literary and historical texts that describe, decry and sometimes celebrate early modern new fashions and bad habits.