Female cross-dressing was an extremely popular phenomenon of the Golden Age comedia, appearing in every major playwrights repertoire. This dissertation argues that Spanish theaters treatment of the female cross-dresser in the seventeenth century offers a paradigm for understanding the creative self-consciousness that made both early modern society theatrical and early modern art unique. I combine analysis of purely fictional cross-dressing protagonists with an examination of the theatrical discourse surrounding real-life gender-benders such as Eleno/a de Céspdes, Catalina de Erauso, Francisca Baltasara, and Queen Christina of Sweden. While Diego Velazquezs Las meninas and Miguel de Cervantess Don Quijote serve as the prominent examples of seventeenth-century Spanish artistic self-reference in the areas of painting and narrative, respectively, I propose the female cross-dresser as symptomatic of a specifically theatrical self-consciousness that captivated public attention within and outside the theater.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07152013-093241 |
| Date | 29 July 2013 |
| Creators | Seagraves, Rosie Marie |
| Contributors | Dr. Edward H. Friedman |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07152013-093241/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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