Speaker: Emily Colbert Cairns, Department of Modern Languages, Salve Regina University - Academia.edu, Google Scholar, ResaerchGate

Abstract: »Sexual violence is a common theme that women face in the novellas by Miguel de Cervantes and María de Zayas. In this paper I discuss the intersection of marginalized figures and the gendered structures of coercion that systematically impact early modern society. In both the Cervantes’s novella, La fuerza de la sangre and Zayas’s La Inocencia castigada, the female protagonists are raped when they are unconscious. Rendering the victims totally passive, these texts speak against the power structures that organize the social order. In Cervantes’s text I rethink the language surrounding an honor-based society to show that this language itself permits sexual violence (deshonra, forzar, inocencia). In Zayas’s text I carefully focus on language that permits gendered violence by rethinking the terms including esclavitud and honor. Power structures are put in question by focusing on the subaltern figure of the moro necromancer who takes an active role in the nightly rape of the female protagonist over the course of a month. This figure establishes a structure by which sexual violence can take place. Analyzing the structures of language and power demonstrate the inequalities that leads to crimes in which the victims are punished and the perpetrators get off without penalty.« (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, La inocencia castigada | Sex and the law: Rape / History of rape