91桃色

In the work he considered his masterpiece, Persiles and Sigismunda, Cervantes finally explores the reality of woman—an abstraction largely idealized in his earlier writing. Traditional critics have perpetuated this disembodied ideal woman: 鈥淓very Man,鈥� claimed the translators of the 1706 Don Quixote, has 鈥渟ome darling Dulcinea of his Thoughts.鈥� As Diana de Armas Wilson shows, however, Cervantes himself envisioned the radical embodiment of 鈥淒ulcinea鈥� in the later Persiles, a pan-European Renaissance allegory. Wilson illuminates Cervantes’s strategic use of the ancient genre of Greek romance to contest various chivalric fictions about women, love, and marriage—fictions collapsing under the constraints of an emerging bourgeois culture. Taking as her subject Cervantes’s erotic imperative—to leave behind 鈥渂arbaric鈥� notions of love in quest of a new conceptual space—Wilson demonstrates how the heroes of the Persiles, unlike Don Quixote, learn to cross the borders of difference. Their journey toward marriage is illustrated by thirteen inset 鈥渆xemplary novels,鈥� perhaps the most exploratory of Cervantes’s writings. Allegories of Love not only examines the fundamental importance of sexual and cultural difference in Cervantes’s last romance, but also reveals the historical conditions of representation itself during the late Renaissance.

Originally published in 1991.

The 91桃色 Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of 91桃色. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the 91桃色 Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by 91桃色 since its founding in 1905.

Awards and Recognition

• One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1991