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Empire Unmanned: Gender Trouble and Genoese Gold in Cervantes's “The Two Damsels”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Barbara Fuchs
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Abstract

This reevaluation of Cervantes's novella “The Two Damsels” argues that the generic hallmarks of romance disguise a minute engagement with pressing social and political concerns. The cross-dressed damsels' search for their truant love, significantly named Marco Antonio, evinces the fraught connection between the vagaries of masculinity in Spain and the potency of Spain's empire. Transformed from romance pageboys to epic Amazons, the damsels champion domestic commitments over imperial concerns, even as they impersonate masculinity. Yet their profound disruption of the gendered social order and the text's insistent references to the literal bankruptcy of Spain's Old World empire cannot be contained by a successful romance resolution, even if Marco Antonio is successfully diverted from his imperial excursion.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 2 , March 2001 , pp. 285 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

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