THE SPANISH SHAHRAZĀD AND HER ENTOURAGE

263 Pages·2004·2.34 MB·English

ABSTRACT
Title of Dissertation: THE SPANISH SHAHRAZ(cid:1)D AND HER
ENTOURAGE: THE POWERS OF STORYTELLING
WOMEN IN LIBRO DE LOS ENGAÑOS DE LAS
MUJERES
Zennia Désirée Hancock, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004
Dissertation Directed By: Associate Professor Carmen Benito-Vessels
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
The anonymous Libro de los engaños e asayamientos de las mugeres (LEM) is a
collection of exempla consisting of a frame tale and twenty-three interpolated tales. It
forms part of the Seven Sages/Sindib(cid:1)d cycle, shares source material with the Arabic Alf
layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), and was ordered translated from Arabic
into Romance by Prince Fadrique of Castile in 1253. In the text, females may be seen as
presented according to the traditional archetypes of Eve and the Virgin Mary; however,
the ambivalence of the work allows that it be interpreted as both misogynous and not,
which complicates the straightforward designation of its female characters as “good” and
bad.” Given this, the topos of Eva/Ave as it applies to this text is re-evaluated.
The reassessment is effected by exploring the theme of ambivalence and by
considering the female characters as hybrids of both western and eastern tradition. The
primary female character of the text, dubbed the “Spanish Shahraz(cid:2)d,” along with other
storytelling women in the interpolated tales, are proven to transcend binary paradigms
through their intellect, which cannot be said to be inherently either good or evil, and
which is expressed through speech acts and performances.
Chapter I reviews the historical background of Alfonsine Spain and the social
conditions of medieval women, and discusses the portrayal of females in literature, while
Chapter II focuses on the history of the exempla, LEM, and critical approaches to the text,
and then identifies Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque and Judith Butler’s speech act
theory of injurious language as appropriate methodologies, explaining how both are
nuanced by feminist perspectives. A close reading of the text demonstrates how it may
be interpreted as a misogynous work. Chapter III applies the theoretical tools in order to
problematise the misogynous reading of the text and to demonstrate the agency of its
female speaker-performers; the analysis centres on the Spanish Shahraz(cid:2)d, who
represents a female subjectivity that transcends binary depictions of women and
represents a holistic ideal of existence that is reflected in the calculated, harmonized use
of both her intellect and corporeality.
THE SPANISH SHAHRAZ(cid:1)D AND HER ENTOURAGE:
THE POWERS OF STORYTELLING WOMEN IN
LIBRO DE LOS ENGAÑOS DE LAS MUJERES
by
Zennia Désirée Hancock
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2004
Advisory Committee:
Associate Professor Carmen Benito-Vessels, Chair
Professor Sandra Cypess
AssociateProfessor Ana-Patricia Rodríguez
AssociateProfessor Hernán Sánchez Martínez de Pinillos
Associate Professor Richard Walker
© Copyright by
Zennia D. Hancock
2004
Dedication
In memory of my grandfather, Thomas Barnes, 1925-2001.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to briefly thank the people that have
supported me both professionally and personally in the writing of this dissertationand in
the completion of other doctoral degree requirements over the past six-and-a-half years.
I thank my advisor, Dr. Carmen Benito-Vessels, for always being so encouraging
and accessible, and for teaching me through challenge and example.
Thanks to all of my former professors and mentors at the University of Maryland
at College Park, for having contributed to so many different areas of my training and
professional development.
Wholehearted thanks to the Graduate School and to theSt. Andrew's Society of
Washington, D.C. for their generous funding.
I also wish to thank my department chair,Dr. Jeff Chamberlain,of George Mason
University, for his unwaveringsupport and good humour.
Finally, my greatest thanks go to my family and friends on both sides of the
Atlantic, and in both hemispheres, as well as to an incrediblyunderstanding, caring, and
patient husband. Thank you all for believing in me.
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Table of Contents
List of Tables......................................................................................................................v
Chapter I: The Historical Context......................................................................................1
Introduction.....................................................................................................................1
From the Muslim Invasion to Alfonso X and the Thirteenth Century..........................14
Women in Medieval Society: Religious and Physiological Treatises, and Socio-
Economic Practices...........................................................................................27
Complicating Misogyny: Women Protected, Empowered, and Defended..................39
Mary Magdalene and Speaking Women.......................................................................53
Beyond the Binary: Shahraz(cid:2)d and the Spanish Shahraz(cid:2)d.........................................61
Chapter II: Criticism and Methodologies........................................................................66
Exempla and Traditions................................................................................................66
The Siete Sabios/Sindib(cid:1)d Cycle and LEM..................................................................74
The Edition Used..........................................................................................................90
The Patron of the Text: Prince Fadrique......................................................................96
Critical Approaches to the Study of Exempla: Text Typologies and Narratology....110
The Suitability of Narratological Systems as Applied to Medieval Literature: In
Search of a Methodology................................................................................114
Questioning Authority: Barthes, Genette, and Bakhtin.............................................128
A Medievalist-Feminist Perspective...........................................................................134
The Voice of the State and Constructions of Love: Female Depravity and Male
Solidarity.........................................................................................................142
Chapter III: The Spanish Shahraz(cid:2)d and Her Entourage Speak....................................166
The Frame Story of LEM............................................................................................166
Bakhtin’s Theory of the Carnival...............................................................................181
The Carnival in LEM: From Crownings and Masquerades to Billingsgate and
Hyperbole........................................................................................................185
The Shahraz(cid:2)ds: A Comparison.................................................................................202
The Power of the Performing Word: Speech Acts and Influence..............................209
Conclusions.................................................................................................................222
Appendix.........................................................................................................................232
Bibliography...................................................................................................................237
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List of Tables
1. Praise/Abuse Directed Towards Women……………………………………181
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Chapter I: The Historical Context
Introduction
As is the case with so many fragments of our western literary tradition, the origins
of the anonymous Libro de los engaños e asayamientos de las mugeres (LEM) lie in the
East, where one of its ancient forefathers spoke Sanskrit and was clothed in a collection
of words that bore the title Panchatantra. Under this name, those words journeyed from
India to Persia, to become the Tuti Nahmeh, before leaving for the Arabian Peninsula,
where they adopted other names, such as the Hebrew Mishle Sendebar and the Arabic Alf
layla wa layla. They continued ever westward, borne by the hands and tongues of
conquerors and wanderers, until they reached entirely different eyes and ears, in the
world of medieval Europe. Thus Semitic peoples brought the words to the Iberian
Peninsula, where, in an Arabic manuscript that is long lost to us, they arrived in
thirteenth-century Castile and found an admiring patron who belonged to a royal family
known for its love of literature and learning. Prince Fadrique, brother to Alfonso X of
Castile, adopted the words and sponsored their translation into romance, the Spanish
vernacular, in 1253.
LEM begins with a frame tale concerning the fulfillment of a prophecy, and an
episode modelled after the story of “Potiphar’s Wife”: One of the king’s ninety
concubines propositions her stepson, the prince, and when he rejects her, she claims that
he tried to violate her. The prince cannot defend himself since his tutor, Çendubete,
having foretold possible doom if the young man utters a word, has bound him to an oath
of silence for seven days. These circumstances instigate an eight-day trial, which is
narrated within the frame by way of interpolated stories told by the opposing parties; the
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queen tells five tales and the king’s counsellors, who step in to speak on the prince’s
behalf, tell thirteen. Presiding as judge, the king alternates between sentencing his only
son to death and sparing him. On the eighth day, when he can finally talk, the prince
relates five tales and manages to save himself. The text ends with the king’s ruling that
the stepmother be boiled alive in a dry cauldron.
The majority of the twenty-three intercalated tales in LEM are told by the male
antagonists as they build their case in order to prove the stepmother’s guilt; as the title of
the text suggests, the deceitfulness of women is a dominant theme in most of them. The
stories describing female fornication and deception reflect a concern of the historical
context into which they were translated; according to official culture, medieval women
who dared to defy norms regarding chaste behaviour—abstinence for virgins and
moderation within marriage for wives—as well as those who contested subordination
with guile, were a threat to social stability, and a nuisance to the male-imposed gender
hierarchy. Prevailing thought concurred with Isidore of Seville (d.636), who had written
that women were to be subject to men, whose every strength was greater. The literary
women in LEM therefore provide excellent fodder for the slander and disdain directed at
them for their perceived misbehaviour.
In their totality, the short narratives we find in this text tell of everything from
straying wives and gleeful pranksters to morphing demons and anthropomorphized
animals. They are bawdy and grotesque, fanciful and funny. They recall the humorous
French fabliaux, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, parables, fairy tales, Aesop’s fables. They
have much in common with all of these, yet they are known as “exempla.” The
exemplum is one of the prototypes for the medieval European short story, and it
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