<p>Alcohol has been present in almost every society throughout history, and so has a double standard around alcohol usage: women are stigmatized far more than men for excessive drinking. In this dissertation, I explore the intimate association between wine consumption and gender relations in Spanish late medieval and early modern literature. In late medieval and early modern European society, distinctions of gender, age, class, religion, and occupation were reflected in what one chose to eat and drink. Wine was undoubtedly the most popular and highly regarded beverage, especially in the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of southern Europe. Wine has always been deeply integrated into the Spaniards’ lives, not only as a daily beverage but also as a marker of individual and group identities. While references to wine have flowed through Spanish literature, thorough examinations of women’s drinking have surprisingly been left unexplored. </p> <p>This study fills that gap, analyzing representations of female drinking in Spanish literature, specifically the ambivalent approach to wine as it relates to the construction of gender identities. This study analyzes the representation of female drinking throughout the Spanish literary canon, especially focusing on the <i>Libro de buen amor</i> (ca. 1343), the <i>Arcipreste de Talavera</i> (also called as <i>Corbacho</i>, ca. 1438), and the <i>Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea </i>(also known as <i>Celestina</i>, 1502) with the purpose of demonstrating how wine consumption constitutes, reflects, and questions normative gender roles. In medieval and early modern Europe, gender identities were either masculine or feminine, attached to rigid, stereotypical gender roles for men and women. Drunken women, therefore, presented a threat that needed to be contained. During the Middle Ages, while drunken women were represented as personifying gluttony and violating both moral and gender norms in didactic, moralizing treatises, there were literary fictions that depicted female drunkards who openly enjoyed wine, praised its virtues, and socialized by drinking with other women. The gender ideology of Spanish patriarchy created masculine anxiety around unfeminine women, like female drunkards, who were unsuited to a life of purity and chastity. I argue that this anxiety, evident in the extreme condemnation of drunken women, paradoxically reveals the contradictions underlying the patriarchal agenda. I also interpret female drinking practices as performative acts of resistance against normative gender roles. Drawing on the notion that gender is a performative act, alcohol drinking by women can be understood as a subversive act that transgresses and reconfigures social norms around gendered identities in late medieval and early modern Spain. </p>

The motif of 'exile-and-return' is found in works from a wide range of periods and linguistic traditions. The standard narrative pattern depicts the return of wrongfully exiled heroes or peoples to their former abode or their establishment of a superior home, which signals a restoration of order. The appeal of the pattern lies in its association with undue loss, rightful recovery and the universal vindication of the protagonist. Though by no means confined to any one period or region, the particular narrative pattern of the exile-and-return motif is prevalent in vernacular texts of England and Spain around 1170–1250. This is the subject of the thesis. The following research engages with scholarship on Anglo-Norman romances and their characteristic use of exile-and-return that sets them apart from continental French romances, by highlighting the widespread employment of this narrative pattern in Spanish poetic works during the same period. The prevalence of the pattern in both literatures is linked to analogous interaction with continental French works, the relationship between the texts and their political contexts, and a common responses to wider ecclesiastical reforms. A broader aim is to draw attention to further, unacknowledged similarities between contemporary texts from these different linguistic traditions, as failure to take into account the wider, multilingual literary contexts of this period leads to incomplete arguments. The methodology is grounded in close reading of four main texts selected for their exemplarity, with some consideration of the historical context and contemporary intertexts: the Romance of Horn, the Cantar de mio Cid, Gui de Warewic and the Poema de Fernán González. A range of intertexts are considered alongside in order to elucidate the particular concerns and distinctive use of exile-and-return in the main works.

Don Juan Manuel’s laudatory portrayal of Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Babylon, in Exempla 25 and 50 of El Conde Lucanor presents an interesting paradox, particularly when considering that the fourteenth-century text was intended as moral instruction for a Christian audience. This report addresses this paradox by determining Saladin’s placement within Juan Manuel’s moral and spiritual philosophy through textual and comparative character analyses. The first section applies Victor Turner’s social drama theory in a textual analysis of Exempla 25 and 50 to establish Juan Manuel’s representation of Saladin as a triumphant figure, capable of meeting and overcoming challenges to his honor and virtue. The second section applies M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to engage in a closer examination of Saladin’s “voice” in relation to other characters of Juan Manuel’s exempla for the purpose of revealing the ambiguities and finer intricacies of Saladin’s character. These analyses serve to raise and address paradoxical questions relating to Juan Manuel’s presentation of Saladin as both a Muslim adversary and friend of Christendom. / text