In Espacio y tiempo de fiesta en Nueva España (1665–1760), Judith Farré Vidal synthesizes and reconsiders the significance of a variety of marginalized festival texts produced in colonial Mexico during its least known century. The author skillfully contextualizes each source's marginality in relation to more canonical festival texts and trends in critical literary theory in an effort to advance the interdisciplinary conversations surrounding early modern ritual, performance, and identity and their connections to struggles over power related to colonial society.
Seven concise chapters illustrate times and places where the style of baroque festival culture was decidedly local, all the while in careful dialogue with literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and art historians who interpret festival culture in a variety of contexts—colonialism, early modern culture, Spanish imperialism, ephemeral art, and mestizaje. The festivals of New Spain typically aimed to consolidate the social order of racial, class, ethnic, gender, and corporate...
