VIOLENDINGS · Violence and Happy Endings in the Spanish Golden Age Narrative

Violence and Happy Endings in the Spanish Golden Age Narrative

The presence of violence in the Spanish Golden Age theater has been widely studied. Honor dramas offer a variety of bloody scenes that have been at the center of the debate about violence -and violence against women- in the Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, there is also a strong presence of violence in the narrative of the Spanish Golden Age, which has been less studied. Interestingly, violence, and especially gender-based violence, appears not only in narrative genres that can be understood as ‘realistic’, but also in narrative genres that present an ‘idealized’ version of the world, such as the pastoral and courtly novels. Even in the idyllic pastoral Arcadias -not to mention the courtly scenarios- there are scenes of violence, and women are often the victims of authoritarian fathers and brothers, jealous husbands, and vengeful lovers who cannot accept rejection and rape or kill them. Among the few studies that have dealt with the presence of violence in pastoral and courtly novels, the solutions to violence have not been systematically analyzed. This project proposed, on the one hand, the creation of a dataset that categorized the scenes of violence (and their solutions) in the pastoral novels written in Spanish between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the courtly novels included in these works. On the other hand, based on this dataset, the project offered a diachronic analysis of the inclusion of violence in these interwoven literary genres. The project proposed the categories of 'deactivation', 'reversal' and 'legitimation' to analyze the solutions offered to scenes of violence, and a classification for the distancing devises employed to narrate violence. Based on the categorization and analysis of solutions and distancing devices, the project developed the concept of an ‘economy of violence’, understood as a narrative regulation of violence that allows plots to be resolved with a happy ending, and studied the evolution of the representation of violence in these literary genres. Beyond the literary approach, the project proposed a multidisciplinary understanding of these strategies bringing together literature, historical sociology and gender studies. Taking into account the social structures of the Golden Age Spain and the concrete context of the production and consumption of these genres, the project addressed the following questions: Against which specific groups is violence in these literary genres most often directed? Who enacts it? In what contexts? Are there different narrative ‘solutions’ provided to resolve violence according to the gender of the victim and the gender of the perpetrator? The project aimed to contribute to a broad analysis of the interplay between the dictates of the Spanish patriarchal society in the 16th and 17th centuries and the structure of the ‘idealistic’ narrative genres of the period. The project had two main R&I objectives. O1: To develop the concept of ‘economy of violence’ from a literary perspective. This objective was achieved by establishing a categorization of the strategies developed to resolve violent scenes and the distancing devices employed in its representation, which was the basis for analyzing the functioning of the narrative regulation of violence. In addition to contributing to the understanding of the ‘idealistic’ narrative genres of the Spanish Golden Age, O1 provided a novel theoretical framework for the analysis of happy ending structures of other literary traditions. O2: Search for the roots of these narrative structures in the social structures of their contexts. O2 was achieved by comparing the social ideals of the Golden Age Spain with the solutions offered to resolve violence, especially gender-based violence, in these plots. O2 addressed a European and global priority, the fifth UN Sustainable Development Goal: gender equality. As similar happy ending plots are reproduced in contemporary popular culture, the study of their roots in the early modern period and the understanding of the social structures that produced them is expected to generate a critical awareness of what our society is used to consuming as ‘happy endings’ and, in particular, as ‘ideal solutions’ to gender-based violence.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз