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First published: June 1, 2025 - Last updated: June 1, 2025
TITLE INFORMATION
Speaker: Sonia Perez-Villanueva
Title: Perverse Agency in La fuerza de la sangre
Subtitle: Leocadia and the Third Space
Conference: 71st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (March 20-22, 2025) - Online Program
Session: Perverse Cervantes: Sexual Violence, Depravity, and Voyeurism (Organizer: Elizabeth L. Spragins)
Place: Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Date: March 21, 2025
Language: English
Keywords:
Modern History:
17th Century |
European History:
Spanish History |
Cases:
Fictional Offenders /
Rodolfo;
Cases:
Fictional Victims /
Leocadia;
Types:
Rape;
Representations:
Literary Texts /
Miguel de Cervantes
FULL TEXT
Link: -
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Speaker:
Sonia Perez-Villanueva,
Liberal Arts & Business Programs,
Lesley University -
Academia.edu,
ORCID,
ResearchGate
Abstract:
»“La fuerza de la sangre” uncovers one of the most shocking and violent narratives of rape of early modern times. The novella reflects a dialectic of male violence that narrates sexual abuse as a titillating and justifiable act, with its “happy” ending in reparation. The text itself, only at the end, introduces a vague discomfort with this. This paper shows that Leocadia is trapped in a closed dyadic space, in the psychoanalyitic sense, where her agency becomes “mired in a trapped perverse state of two-ness” where “fusion-based dynamics, power relations, and brute force” (Jill Gentile) become the basis of the way the characters relate. The all-consuming appetite of Rodolfo for Leocadia, as well as the relationship she is forced to have with her own child and her pregnancy, are examples of a fusion-based dynamic. All this puts Leocadia in the position of someone with a perversion of agency: she is not narrated as a subject but portrayed as a body used for the readers’ pleasure. Leocadia, the rape victim in the text, is not allowed to develop in the third space as a survivor; rather, she remains trapped in the immorality of the sexual act, an endlessly consumed body.«
(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 |
Sex and the law:
Rape /
History of rape
|