Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Note to the Reader
- Introduction
- 1 Women’s Lives and Women’s Literacy in Amadís de Gaula
- 2 Women’s Literacy in Beatriz Bernal’s Cristalián deEspaña
- 3 The Triumph of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part I
- 4 The Defeat of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part II
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Note to the Reader
- Introduction
- 1 Women’s Lives and Women’s Literacy in Amadís de Gaula
- 2 Women’s Literacy in Beatriz Bernal’s Cristalián deEspaña
- 3 The Triumph of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part I
- 4 The Defeat of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part II
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mi raviosa quexa acompañada de sobrada razón da lugar a que la flaca mano declare lo que el triste coraçón encubrir no puede contra vos el falso y desleal cavallero Amadís de Gaula, pues ya es conoçida la deslealtad y poca firmeza que contra mí, la más desdichada y menguada de ventura sobre todas las del mundo,
havéis mostrado(My furious complaint accompanied by more than enough reason causes my weak hand to declare what the heart cannot conceal to you, most false and disloyal knight Amadis of Gaul; it is now well known what disloyalty and little constancy you have shown to me, the most wretched and least fortunate woman in the world)
‒ Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadís de GaulaIn Book II of Amadís de Gaula (1508), Oriana, the princess of Britain, writes an angry letter to her lover, Amadís, telling him never to come near her again. Oriana's famous letter, from which I drew the epigraph, reveals the unexpected role women's literacy plays in the plot of Amadís and the other early modern Spanish texts that imitated it. While men do almost all the fighting in early modern Iberian romance, women do much of the writing. Battles occupy many pages, but letters and prophecies, both of which tend to originate with women, flow between and around them. Interpolated texts attributed to women link characters across distance and open a space for personality, interiority, and emotion in the narratives. In this book, I contend that the interior worlds of Iberian chivalry and the women characters who shape them create a ripple effect that can be felt, even to the present day, in works of fiction that borrow from Iberian romance.
The literary fortunes of Oriana and her letter encapsulate in miniature the power and the ambivalence of Iberian chivalry's fictionalized women. Oriana is a hybrid creation, part medieval señora of courtly love and part early modern queen in the style of Isabel la Católica. Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, the editor-compiler of the early modern Amadís, characterizes her as cruel at some moments and admirable at others.
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- Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern SpainFrom Amadís de Gaula to Don Quixote, pp. 11 - 40Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018