Description
- Abstract:
- While scholars have examined at length the so-called "Celestina Cycle," or works inspired by La Celestina, they have not compared the parallel reception of this fifteenth-century bestseller by Old Christian, Converso, and Morisco authors. This dissertation examines the appropriation of La Celestina and the figure of the medieval Iberian go-between, also known as the alcahueta, in four sixteenth-century texts. Chapter one discusses Francisco Delicado's Retrato de la Lozana andaluza (1514-1529) and El modo de usar el palo de la India Occidental (1527). Arguing that an examination of the links between Delicado's protagonist and the alcahueta allows us to analyze the author's challenge of cultural and religious homogeneity, the chapter also considers Delicado's medical treatise to explore how syphilis and palo santo fuel the creation of the portrait of a go-between in a transatlantic and transmediterranean context. Chapter two studies Feliciano de Silva's Segunda comedia de la Celestina (1534), focusing on Celestina’s revival from the dead. Considering both the resuscitated mediator, as well as visual aspects of the oldest surviving edition of Silva’s text, the chapter demonstrates how this (re)appropriation of the resurrection motif questions late medieval and early modern notions of blood purity. Chapter three focuses on the reception of La Celestina and the go-between in El Mancebo de Arévalo's's Tractado, or Tafsira (mid-sixteenth century). The author's recorded interviews with Nasrid Granadians and morisca women constitute the highlight of this chapter, as their anecdotes capture living memories of the last Muslim stronghold and the results of the reconquista in different areas of the peninsula. Engaging with the alcahueta as a figure that challenges prevailing notions of contamination and purity, the chapter illustrates how the go-between takes on a non-traditional dimension in El Mancebo’s work by occupying marginal spaces that are iconic to the loss of identity that accompanied Spanish Muslims’ trajectory from mudéjares to moriscos. Read together in the same critical framework, Delicado’s, Silva’s, and El Mancebo’s texts give new voice to the figure of the medieval Iberian go-between in heterodox sixteenth-century texts, diverging from prescribed codes of Catholic orthodoxy.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2017
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Citation
Nate, Andrea Frances,
"Conversa, Morisca, and “Old Christian” Descendants of the Medieval Iberian Go- Between"
(2017).
Hispanic Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0FJ2F8B
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Hispanic Studies Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Hispanic Studies department....