Speaker: Elizabeth L Spragins, Spanish Department, College of the Holy Cross - Academia.edu, Google Scholar

Abstract: »During the final part of Part I of Don Quixote, Dorotea, victim of Don Fernando’s rape, becomes for Sancho and Don Quixote the Princess Micomicona, damsel in distress from the African land of Micomicón. Even as Dorotea herself has been “perverted” in early modern terms by don Fernando, her response to that violation is perverse in her mobilization of twisted racial structures to outsource the pain of her rape to Micomicona. The sexual violence that Dorotea offloads onto Micomicona and her subjects resurfaces in Sancho’s contemplation of how don Quixote’s marriage with this African princess will serve him economically and socially. Even as he expects that don Quixote will physically enjoy this beautiful woman, Sancho also contemplates the transfiguration of her subjects from black into white and yellow, which I show anticipates the racial miscegenation that will result from the sexual violence endemic to a slave society comprised primarily of women. An intersectional, trauma-centered reading of the Dorotea episode thus begins in the necessary corrective of recognizing her as a victim of sexual assault and ends with a recognition of how that same perverse dynamic of sexual violence inflects her role-playing of Micomicona.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Spain / Habsburg Spain | Fiction: Fictional victims of sexual assault | Literature: Spanish literature / Miguel de Cervantes | Literature: Novel about rape / Don Quixote | Sex and the law: Rape / History of rape