«De essencia de la Muger». A propósito de unos comentarios de Juan Caramuel sobre la incontinencia vocal en el contexto de la teoría de los afectos y la restrictio sensible

Abstract

«De essencia de la Muger» is the first verse of a mnemotechnic poem introduced by Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz in his Apparatus Philosophicus to strenghten his comments on the appropriateness of silence as the only decorous feminine attitude. Caramuel's criticism of feminine vocal discourse diverges from his praise of the same attitude --the vocal expression of disagreement-- as soon as it takes place from a male-centered perspective. His quote of Quevedo's Epistola censoria and his own controversial vital attitude might be better understood bearing in mind this perspective. Uncovering the decorous veil of rhetoric irony, the underlying question is whether secular feminine ethics were possible at all in 17th century Europe in a poetic and social system as the one Caramuel defends, and which is also supported by other European rationalist theorists of gesture and affect, both within a non-confessional context, and within the spiritual one represented by Jesuit post-Trento doctrine.