Speaker: Margaret E. Boyle, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Bowdoin College - Academia.edu

Abstract: »The significant body of scholarship in early modern Hispanic feminisms demonstrates how and why women writers from the period resisted and redressed canonical ideas about gender, pleasure and normativity generally, as well as specifically in Miguel de Cervantes’s work. Part one of this paper offers a comparative analysis of violence against women in Cervantes’s Novelas Ejemplares (1613) and María de Zayas’s Novelas amorosos y ejemplares (1637), considering how these varied representations of gender norms and patterns of behaviors are inflected by author biographies and shaped by movements within literary criticism over centuries. Attention will also be paid to the publication and translation histories surrounding the early editions of both works and how this shapes their impact in subsequent generations. Part two moves to contemporary adaptations by Hispanic feminist writers of Miguel Cervantes’s novellas: María Folguera’s Sangre forzada (2018) and Las ejemplares (2021). As did María de Zayas, María Folguera will too expose the limitations of the varied ways Cervantes’ stories depict gender-based violence and normativity in content, form and reception. Working across both early modern and contemporary adaptations will provide some space to consider the ongoing relevance of reshaping and responding to Cervantes.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Spain / Habsburg Spain | Fiction: Fictional victims of sexual assault | Literature: Spanish literature / Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Ejemplares | Literature: Spanish literature / María de Zayas | Sex and the law: Sexual assault