This volume of essays is a noteworthy contribution to the study of the presence of the Spanish language and culture in Naples from the early modern period to the modern era. Naples’s close ties with the Spanish cultural sphere are rooted in its historical past. During the fifteenth century the kingdom was under the rule of Alfonso V of Aragon, who privileged the use of Spanish (and Latin) at court. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that the first examples of Neapolitan vernacular literature were in Spanish. With a lapse of the incursion of Tuscan verse (1476–1503), a renewed interest in the Spanish language and literature emerged as soon as 1503 up to 1707, coinciding with the years in which the kingdom was part of the Spanish Crown. This volume provides a unique opportunity to encounter a myriad of perspectives on the importance of the Spanish language and culture in Naples, a contribution that complements the increasing bibliography on the Spanish-Italian relationships during the early modern period. This collection of eighteen articles offers a detailed knowledge of local history and archival sources from disciplines that range from history to history of the book, cartography, philology, and literary studies.

Figures such as the Marquis of Pescara and Belisario Acquaviva emerge as cultivated patrons of the arts who favored the Spanish language to gain the favor of the emperor Charles V, as Encarnación Sanchéz García has remarkably demonstrated when reconstructing the actors and intentions behind the publication of the Propalladia (Naples, 1517) by Bartolomé Torres Naharro, one of the first and most famous Spanish playwrights and theatrical theorists of the sixteenth century. The emperor himself, as Tobia Raffaele Toscano points out, is the addressee of numerous relaciones de sucesos. In fact, his presence in the city (1536) raised considerably the number of publications, and left a trace of the micropolitics of the Neapolitan noblesse vis à vis the Spanish empire. Subsequent publications and their editorial history, according to Marco Federici, highlight the contribution of this local noblesse, particularly in African enterprises, as in the Historia de la guerra y presa de Africa (1552) by Pedro de Salazar, as well as the use of symbols of the Habsburg dynasty, such as the Immaculate Conception, by the Spanish Neapolitan viceroyalty (addressed by Pierre Civil).

The pace of Spanish publications during the seventeenth century is still high (Marco Santoro). The vicerroyal court of Naples was also an important point of encounter for Spanish Golden Age writers, under the viceroyalties of the Seventh Count of Lemos (1606–16), the Third Duke of Osuna (1616–20), and the Third Duke of Alcalá (1629–31). Lemos’s literary choices are examined by Maria D’Agostino; the journey and the autograph manuscript of Francisco de Quevedo’s Anacreonte in Naples under Osuna is looked at by Elena Gallego and Francisca Molla; the echoes of Luis de Góngora’s poetry in the city are explored by Encarnación Sánchez García; and the works of Cristobal Sánchez de Figueroa under Alcalá are discussed by Flavia Gherardi and by Andrea Baldissera. Francisco de Araujo’s Historia de los mártires de Otranto (1631), Miguel de Silveira’s Macabeo (1638), and Antonio Pérez Navarrete’s Las grandezas del restaurador de los estados de la Yglesia (1654) would appear in the Neapolitan presses, and attest, as Roberto Mondola, Mercedes Blanco, and Elena Papagna have respectively shown to a continuity of the importance of the Neapolitan publications in the Spanish language. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Maria Gabriella Mansi writes, the embassies and royal appearances of Spanish rulers were recorded as perdurable events thanks to the relaciones written in the vernacular both in Spanish and Italian; and events such as the Mount Vesuvius’s eruption (1631) had numerous accounts in Spanish that came directly from the Neapolitan presses, according to Laura Rodríguez Fernández.

A considerable number of articles in the volume are accompanied by a wealth of images that account for an extremely rich material history of the pieces discussed, as well as an analysis of the function of paratextual materials, such as architectonical frontispieces (Maria Francesca Stamuli), unique reproductions of cartographical maps of the Neapolitan territory (Vincenzo Boni), and events viewed from other provinces, such as Milan (Giuseppe Mazzocchi). A helpful introduction, precise endnotes, a bibliography at the end of each contribution, and a back-of-the-book index enhance the volume. Indeed the strength of the book is to present an analysis of many of the major works published in Spanish in Naples.