Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Early modern Spain saw the advent of numerous laws that intended to homogenize the Spanish identity, but Cervantes' characters consistently challenge this emerging identity's boundaries in the guise of others. Barbara Fuchs analyzes the notion of 'passing,' or dressing as others, in Cervantes' works as a subversive force that undermines both empire and genre. The act of a man dressing as a woman, a Christian dressing as a moor, or a slave dressing as a ruler shows the fluidity of the gender, religious, ethnic, class, or literary categories that the proposed national identity meant to define. Fuchs makes a convincing case for Cervantes' questioning the fixity of Spain's physical and ideological borders. She looks closely at Don Quixote and the ways in which passing influences the concepts of gender and race. She also deals with more marginal works ('Las dos doncellas,' 'El amante liberal,'
La gran sultana, 'La española inglesa,' and the Persiles) and discusses their influence on cultural, political, and literary categories of the time. In all, Fuchs' book is a persuasive reason for considering Cervantes' fictions within the social context of their time. She adeptly demonstrates that Cervantes uses the cross-dressing conventional to the literature of the time to achieve social commentary that has been virtually overlooked by critics until now." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Passing for Spain charts the intersections of identity, nation, and literary representation in early modern Spain. Barbara Fuchs analyzes the trope of passing in Don Quijote and other works by Cervantes, linking the use of disguise to the broader historical and social context of Counter-Reformation Spain and the religious and political dynamics of the Mediterranean Basin.
In five lucid and engaging chapters, Fuchs examines what passes in Cervantes's fiction: gender and race in Don Quijote and "Las dos doncellas"; religion in "El amante liberal" and La gran sultana; national identity in the Persiles and "La espa ola inglesa." She argues that Cervantes represents cross-cultural impersonation -- or characters who pass for another gender, nationality, or religion -- as challenges to the state's attempts to assign identities and categories to proper Spanish subjects.
Fuchs demonstrates the larger implications of this challenge by bringing a wide range of literary and political texts to bear on Cervantes's representations. Impeccably researched, Passing for Spain examines how the fluidity of individual identity in early modern Spain undermined a national identity based on exclusion and difference.
Table of Contents
Passing and the fictions of Spanish identity -- Border crossings : transvestism and "passing" in Don Quijote -- Empire unmanned : gender trouble and genoese gold in "Las dos doncellas" -- Passing pleasures : costume and custom in "el amante liberal" and La gran sultana -- La disimulaciâon es provechosa : the critique of transparency in the Persiles and "La espaänola inglesa".