Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern Spain: From Amads de Gau [Hardcover]

The Iberian chivalric romance has long been thought of as an archaic, masculine genre and its popularity as an aberration in European literary history. Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern Spain contests this view, arguing that the surprisingly egalitarian gender politics of Spain's most famous romance of chivalry has guaranteed it a long afterlife. Amad?s de Gaula had a notorious appeal for female audiences, and the early modern authors who borrowed from it varied in their reactions to its large cast of literate female characters. Don Quixote and other works that situate women as readers carry the influence of Amad?s forward into the modern novel. When early modern authors read chivalric romance, they also read gender, harnessing the female characters of the source text to a variety of political and aesthetic purposes. This book analyses many versions of the romance from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and England and tells a new story of the life, death, and influences of Amad?s.Introduction Chapter 1: Womens Lives and Womens Literacy in Amad?s de Gaula Chapter 2: Womens Literacy in Beatriz Bernals Cristali?n de Espa?a Chapter 3: The Triumph of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part I Chapter 4: The Defeat of Women Readers of Chivalry in Don Quixote Part II Conclusion, Bibliograph, Notes.This book analyses many versions of the romance from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and England and tells a new story of the life, death, and influences of Amad?s.Stacey Triplette is an Assistant Professor of Spanish and French at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. Her essays have appeared in Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, and La cor?nica.Triplette's focused critique of women's literacy, both of the medieval texts' fictional characters and of women themselves as their readers,lã-