This collection of essays edited by Ana María Laguna and John Beusterien traces the displacement of love in the works of Miguel de Cervantes, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Francisco de Quevedo, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, and the playwright Francisco de la Torre y Sevil. Divided into four parts, the eleven essays explore the diverse and unconventional manifestations of the sentiment in different genres and within the social turmoil that complicated and altered the literary landscape.
Appropriately dominated by essays that offer new perspectives on Cervantine texts, the volume opens with two essays that examine Cervantes's displacement of genre-defining gender roles through enhanced female presence and subjectivity. Joan Cammarata and Ana María Laguna explore how Cervantes expands the limits of classical pastoral convention through Marcela's quest for emotional self-fulfillment. Unlike traditional interpretations of Marcela's actions as narcissistic and destructive, the essay upholds the shepherdess's embodiment of self-love. Mercedes Alcalá Galán's comparative reading of the interpolated tale The Curious Impertinent and the interlude The Jealous Old Man illustrates how Cervantes models Ariosto to critique male jealousy and decriminalize female adultery. While these splendid essays reinforce the existence of female agency in the early modern Spanish context, the section does not consider Cervantes's female contemporaries.
Subsequent essays explore the complex interplay between affect and reason. Eric Clifford Graf examines how Cervantes and El Greco use geometry and mathematics to advocate for a rational love (agape). Eli Cohen's and Jesús Maestro's essays consider rational love from racial and gendered perspectives, reflecting the sociocultural tensions of the period. Cohen argues that by associating rationality with marginal subjects such as women and gypsies, Cervantes's “The Little Gypsy Girl” replaces Petrarchan and Neoplatonic ideals with a reformed ethical concept of love. Maestro extends the theme of rational love to The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda from an anomic perspective to show how characters deviate from and assert their resistance to the expectations of Counter-Reformation orthodoxy. This reading is complemented by Christina Lee's identification of Cenotia as an antithesis to figures like Ana Félix and Rafala through which Cervantes reshapes the trope of eros, connecting sexual deviation with her status as a Morisca in Spain. Particularly compelling is Lee's interpretation of Cenotia's interracial desire for Antonio as an allegory for the Morisca's desire for acceptance into the Spanish body politic.
Gender and desire also intertwine in Adrienne Martín's comprehensive essay on how male poets subverted love tropes and early modern sensitivity to animals by emphasizing the sexual aspects of women's affective relationships with dogs. The author elegantly details the connection between animals, sexuality, and eroticism, with a particular focus on the intimate spaces that women shared with their nonhuman companions. In the first study in English of Francisco de la Torre y Sevil's The Confession with the Devil, John Beusterien asserts that the play propagates racism through its depictions of Blackness as synonymous with lasciviousness and monstrosity. Beusterian's reading of masculine erotic desire for a Black Madonna icon alongside Tucapel's rape of Francesca reinforces racial stereotypes that deny agency to Black subjects.
The final essays examine innovations to the epic genre that prioritize and problematize military and heroic ambitions. Diana de Armas Wilson's succinct essay considers the life of Uludj Ali, from his beginnings as a Christian captive to Ottoman admiral. The essay's strength lies in its incorporation of Turkish sources and connection to Cervantes's fictionalized Uchalí in “The Captive's Tale” to illustrate how it was ultimately Uludj Ali's love for the Mediterranean Sea that fueled his impulsive conversion and loyalty to the sultan. Jason McCloskey's rereading of Lope de Vega's Jerusalem Conquered as an Aristotelian tragedy instead of a heroic romance through the visual descriptions on the walls expose the internal divisions within the Spanish military, displacing the heroic ethos of the poem and challenging us to critically reflect on the Spanish army's unheroic performance.
Ana María Laguna's final essay juxtaposes receptions of the role of eros in Don Quixote by the Generations of 1898 and 1927. By analyzing how each group's divergent sensibilities complicate and contest more traditional assessments of Cervantine love, the essay captures the overarching theme of the volume that writing about love is neither simple nor one-sided, as the works of Cervantes and his contemporaries illustrate.
