Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:29:08.851Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empire Unmanned: Gender Trouble and Genoese Gold in Cervantes's “The Two Damsels”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Barbara Fuchs
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This reevaluation of Cervantes's novella “The Two Damsels” argues that the generic hallmarks of romance disguise a minute engagement with pressing social and political concerns. The cross-dressed damsels' search for their truant love, significantly named Marco Antonio, evinces the fraught connection between the vagaries of masculinity in Spain and the potency of Spain's empire. Transformed from romance pageboys to epic Amazons, the damsels champion domestic commitments over imperial concerns, even as they impersonate masculinity. Yet their profound disruption of the gendered social order and the text's insistent references to the literal bankruptcy of Spain's Old World empire cannot be contained by a successful romance resolution, even if Marco Antonio is successfully diverted from his imperial excursion.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 2 , March 2001 , pp. 285 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Vol. 1. Trans. Sian Reynolds. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.Google Scholar
Calabria, Antonio. The Cost of Empire: The Finances of the Kingdom of Naples in the Time of Spanish Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.10.1017/CBO9780511583520CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrasco, Rafael. Inquisición y represión sexual en Valencia. Historia de los sodomitas (1565-1785). Barcelona: Laertes, 1985.Google Scholar
Casalduero, Joaquín. Sentido y forma de las Novelas ejemplares. Madrid: Gredos, 1969.Google Scholar
Cascardi, Anthony J. Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age. University Park: Penn State UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Ed. de Riquer, Martín. Barcelona: Planeta, 1997.Google Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. “Las dos doncellas.” Cervantes Saavedra. Novelas ejemplares 2: 199-237.Google Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Novelas ejemplares. 2 vols. Ed. Harry Sieber. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995.Google Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. “Prólogo al lector.” Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplares 1: 50-53.Google Scholar
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. “La señora Cornelia.” Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas ejemplares 2: 239-77.Google Scholar
Covarrubias, Sebastián de. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española. 1611. Madrid: Turner, 1977.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. H. “The Decline of Spain.” Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660: Essays from Past and Present. Ed. Trevor Aston. London: Routledge, 1965. 167–93.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. H. The Revolt of the Catalans: A Study in the Decline of Spain, 1598-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1963.Google Scholar
El Saffar, Ruth. Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Barbara. “Border Crossings: Transvestism and ‘Passing’ in Don Quijote. Cervantes 16.2 (1996): 4–28.Google Scholar
García Cárcel, Ricardo. Historia de Cataluña, siglos XVI XVII: Los caracteres originales de la historia de Cataluña. Barcelona: Ariel, 1985.Google Scholar
Herrero García, M. Ideas de los españoles del siglo XVII. Madrid: Voluntad, 1928.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism.” The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981. 103–50.Google Scholar
Johnson, Carroll. “‘La española inglesa’ and the Practice of Literary Production.” Viator 19 (1988): 377–416.10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301380CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamen, Henry. Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Lope de Vega Carpio, Félix. El desconfiado. Obras de Lope de Vega. Vol. 4. Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1917.Google Scholar
Martínez López, Enrique. “Sobre la amnistía de Roque Guinart: El laberinto de la bandositat catalana y los moriscos en el Quijote.” Cervantes 11.2 (1991): 69–85.Google Scholar
Monter, William. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.10.1017/CBO9780511523434CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montoliú, Manuel, and Casas, José María. “Cervantes y sus elogios a Barcelona.” Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 13 (1927-28): 35–140.Google Scholar
Parker, Geoffrey. The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road. 1567-1659. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Patricia, Parker. Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Pérez Jiménez., Aurelio “Plutarco y el humanismo español del renacimiento.” Estudios sobre Plutarco: Obra y tradición. Actas del I symposion español sobre Plutarco. Ed. Jiménez, Pérez and Calderón, Gonzalo del Cerro. Málaga: Delegación Provincial de Cultura, 1990. 229–47.Google Scholar
Perry, Mary Elizabeth. “The ‘Nefarious Sin’ in Early Modern Seville.” The Pursuit of Sodomy: Male Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe. Ed. Kent Gerard and Gert Hekma. New York: Harrington Park. 1989. 67–89.Google Scholar
Pike, Ruth. Enterprise and Adventure: The Genoese in Seville and the Opening of the New World. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Pike, Ruth. “The Image of the Genoese in Golden Age Literature.” Hispania 46 (1963): 705–14.10.2307/337196CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pujades, Jeroni. Dietari de Jeroni Pujades. Ed. Casas Homs, Josep M. Vol. 1 (1601-05). Barcelona: Fundació Casajuana, 1975.Google Scholar
Quevedo, Francisco. Poesía varia. Ed. James O. Crosby. Madrid: Cátedra. 1981.Google Scholar
Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Antonio, Rey Hazas. “Novelas ejemplares.” Cervantes: Seminario sobre el estado actual de los estudios cervantinos. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, 1995. 173–209.Google Scholar
Riquer., Martín de Cervantes en Barcelona. Barcelona: Sirmio, 1989.Google Scholar
Ruiz Martín, Felipe. “Las finanzas españolas durante el reinado de Felipe II.” Hispania: Cuadernos de historia 1968: 109–73.Google Scholar
Suñé Benages, Juan. Elogios de Cervantes a Barcelona. Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 12 (1925-26): 463–560.Google Scholar
Tanner, Marie. The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Tirso, de Molina. En Madrid y en una casa. Obras dramáticas completas. Ed. de los Ríos, Blanca. Vol. 3. Madrid: Aguilar, 1958.Google Scholar
Vélez Quiñones, Harry. “Angels and Pilgrims: Gender Instability and Its Containment in Cervantes's ‘Las dos doncellas.‘” Cervantes Soc. meeting, San Francisco. Dec. 1998.Google Scholar
Virgil. Aeneid. Virgil. Trans. H. R. Fairclough. Vol. 2. Loeb Classical Lib. 64. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994.Google Scholar