ML2305 Deviance, Defiance and Disorder in Early Modern Spanish and French Literature

Teaching Terms: 1 and 2

Convenors: Dr Joseph Harris, Dr Arantza Mayo

Assessment: Formative commentary exercise (0%); Essay of 1,500-2,000 words (30%); Exam (60%); Moodle quizzes (10%).

Overview:

This course introduces students to a range of important texts and authors, both canonical and non-canonical, from early modern Spain and France. Yet it does so through a selection of outsider figures – characters whose aberrant or idiosyncratic identity, outlook, or behaviour sets them at odds with their society. The characters on this course thus challenge some of society’s most deeply entrenched but often unwritten codes – of reason, gender, decorum, sexuality, class, and religion – and can thus offer important insights into the workings and values of the society whose norms they transgress. As we shall see, though, the treatment of such figures can vary widely. Whereas the outsider’s departure from the norm is often apparently ridiculed or censured, it can sometimes be celebrated or rehabilitated – whether by other characters within the fiction or by the literary work itself. Indeed, the period’s fascination with marginal or transgressive characters and behaviour betrays throughout a deep unease about the validity of its own norms and standards.

This course is shared by Comparative Literature and Culture, French and Spanish degree programmes. 

Set texts

SPANISH

Lope de Vega, La dama boba (Lady Nitwit)

English version: Lady Nitwit, trans. William I. Oliver (Bilingual Press, 1998). Please note this is a bilingual edition.

Spanish original: any edition but the following is particularly recommended: La dama boba, ed. Diego Marín (Cátedra, 2006).

Tirso de Molina, Don Gil de las calzas verdes (Don Gil of the Green Breeches)

English version: Don Gil of the Green Breeches, ed. Gordon G. Minter (Liverpool University Press, 1991; previously Aris and Phillips). Please note this is a bilingual edition.

Spanish original: Don Gil de las calzas verdes, ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás (Cátedra, 2009).

FRENCH

Molière, Les Femmes savantes (The Clever Women)

English version: The Clever Women, in The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays, translated by Maya Slater (Oxford World's Classics, 2008)

French version: any edition

Choisy, Mémoires de l'abbé de Choisy habillé en femme (The Transvestite Memoirs of the Abbé de Choisy)

English version: Transvestite memoirs of the Abbe de Choisy (Peter Owen, 2008) [available via https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Transvestite-memoirs-Abbe-Choisy/072061256X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486637848&sr=8-1&keywords=choisy+memoirs ]

French version: Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habille en femme (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform: Paris, 2016) [available via https://www.amazon.co.uk/Memoires-labbe-Choisy-habille-femme/dp/152384664X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1486637848&sr=8-3&keywords=choisy+memoirs   ]