Sexual Violence in History: A Bibliography

compiled by Stefan Blaschke

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Start: Alphabetical Index: Speaker Index: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

First published: June 1, 2025 - Last updated: June 1, 2025

TITLE INFORMATION

Speaker: Felipe Valencia

Title: Maritornes, the Right to Sex, and the Matter of Angelica in Cervantes’s Don Quijote

Subtitle: -

Conference: 71st Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (March 20-22, 2025) - Online Program

Session: The Hiddenness of Sexual Violence in Early Modern Spanish Literature II: Justifications and Technologies (Chair: Elizabeth L. Spragins)

Place: Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Date: March 22, 2025

Language: English

Keywords: Modern History: 17th Century | European History: Spanish History | Cases: Fictional Offenders / Don Quijote; Cases: Fictional Victims / Maritornes; Types: Sexual Assault; Representations: Literary Texts / Miguel de Cervantes



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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Speaker: Felipe Valencia, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Utah State University - Academia.edu, Google Scholar, Knowledge Commons, ORCID

Abstract: »Don Quijote’s sexual assault on Maritornes in part 1 of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605–1615), largely hidden in scholarship and teaching, derives from his erotic or, more properly, pornographic project: his quest to obtain erotic fulfillment and accompanying expectation that, as a knight errant, he has a “right to sex” (to borrow Amia Srinivasan’s recent formulation) with a certain kind of women. This project lies at the heart of his chivalric quest, on a par with his ethical and political goal of restoring the age of chivalry and his literary goal of composing a libro de caballerías. This paper analyzes Don Quijote’s assault on Maritornes in light of several contexts: the early modern burlesque motif of the feeble old man who cannot accomplish a rape; Don Quijote’s comments on the erotic exploits of knights errant; his interactions with adolescent young women, for instance Palomeque’s daughter and Altisidora; his explosive reaction to Maese Pedro’s puppet show; and particularly his angry appraisal of Angelica’s preference for the African infantryman Medoro over many Christian knights in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. This last episode, as I will show, allows us to unravel the hiddenness of sexual violence in Don Quijote.« (Source: Online Program)

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