Library of Rassegna iberistica

Series | Library of Rassegna iberistica
Edited book | The Admiration of All Mankind
Chapter | La fuerza de la sangre cervantina en el espejo de una novela de Kleist

La fuerza de la sangre cervantina en el espejo de una novela de Kleist

Abstract

In 1808, the German author Heinrich von Kleist published the novella The Marquise of O., which bears an obvious resemblance to The Force of Blood from Cervantes’s Exemplary Novels. In both cases, the female protagonist marries a man after being raped by him. At first sight, Kleist’s text seems to testify to a degree of progress in female emancipation because the victim has doubts about accepting the rapist as her husband. Other aspects of his novella are less conducive to proving such a progress. Kleist stresses the pressures of family honour more than Cervantes does, and he does not restrict himself merely to qualifying rape as a sin or crime. He also hints at the possibility of an unconscious yielding to bodily needs, questioning thus the power of reason to govern sexual desires.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Feb. 8, 2021 | Accepted: June 9, 2021 | Published Dec. 1, 2021 | Language: es

Keywords Body • Individual • Society • Gender • Narrative perspective

Copyright © 2021 Wolfgang Matzat. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-579-7/011


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