HISP 226 - Medieval and Early Modern Spain

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Studies in Spanish literary and cultural production from the time of the Reconquest to the end of the Hapsburg Empire.

Topic for 2023/24a: Busconas, Celestinas and Don Juanes: Reading the Language of Sex Work and Seduction in Early Modern Spain. This course primarily explores how the discourse on early modern female behavior presents itself in literary and legal sources. The objective of the course is to explore the larger social framework that regulates women’s behavior in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain. Through the study of a variety of legal measures and moral treatises that define the boundaries of “sin” in Early Modern Spain, we trace the rich symbolic and literary trajectory of both the character of the pícara (she-rogue) as a sexualized woman and the character of don juan (playboy) as a middle-aged womanizer. The course pays special attention to the anxieties that the regulation of prostitution caused in Spanish society, but it also delves on the mechanisms of emotional deception that men used to seduce and persuade women to engage in pre-marital sex. Materials for analysis include selections of legal texts, moralist writings and literary works by Francisco Delicado, Miguel de Cervantes, Tirso de Molina and María de Zayas. Nicolas Vivalda.

Prerequisite(s): One course above HISP 206.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS