Female Amerindians in Early Modern Spanish Theater

Gladys Robalino

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781611486117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Female Amerindians in Early Modern Spanish Theater is a collection of essays that focuses on the female Amerindian characters in comedias based on the discovery, exploration, and conquest of America. This book emerges as a response to the limited number of studies that focus on these characters, and more importantly, on the function of these characters as theatrical artifacts within conquest plays. Conquest plays are about a handful, their heroes are the European male conquerors, yet 'the Amerindian' has attracted attention from critics for the value as constructs of cultural discourse. We see this character, the 'theatrical Indian,' as a construct, an instrument, in many ways, a spectacular artifact of the baroque tramoya, which emerges from the conversion point of the Counterreformation ideology. It has been our purpose here to advance the study of these characters by adding a gender perspective. Therefore, while sociological and cultural studies are still a fundamental part of the theoretical framework of this project, we use feminism as a critical matrix in our inquiries. Amerindian female characters stand apart from male Amerindians and Spanish women in dramas, which, we believe, make them worthy of individual attention. The articles in this collection delineate different representations of Amerindian women and, as a whole, this book contributes to a better understanding of the dramatic use of these characters.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• A Note on Translations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Courting the Female Body: Towards a Poetics of the Conquest in Lope de Vega’s El Nuevo Mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón
• The Role of Amerindian Women in Fernando de Zárate’s La Conquista de México
• Amazonas en las Indias or Witches in the Amazon? Representing Otherness through the Stereotype of the Witch
• La aurora en Copacabana : Guacolda from Vestal Virgin to Virginal Model
• The Siren Song and the Enchanted Victim: The Portrayal of the Conquistadors and Tucapela in Palabras a los reyes y gloria de los Pizarros
• Amazonas en las Indias : Mixed Marriages and the Pizarros’ Political Project
• Envisioning Guacolda, from Lyrical Creation to Ideological Manipulation
• La María sin Don: Subtle Mockery of the Establishment in El gobernador prudente
• Love and Fury: The Evolution of Fresia in Arauco domado of Lope de Vega
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Contributors