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Gómez, María A., Santiago Juan-Navarro, and Phyllis Zatlin, eds. Juana of Castik: History and Myth of the Mad Queen. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2008. 267 pp.
This illuminating book is the first interdisciplinary approach to Juana of Castile, the supposedly mad daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who never actually reigned. Forgotten for centuries, she became the subject of literary and artistic representations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, most of the different essays in this collection, each of them anchored in its socio-political context, explore the mythical queen in an attempt to understand her as well as the circumstances of her new representation and, in the process, issues of madness and nation come to light. The interpretations, from a variety of angles, range from history, national, and foreign literary representations, and the arts, and focus on political allegory, nineteenth-century interest in necrophilia, or madness itself, to highlight a few. Moreover, according to some the queen is innocently caught in a web of intrigue, whereas for others her madness is deliberate.
The first two articles, historical in nature, help set the complexities of the character, providing two different interpretations. Whereas Bethany Aram looks into the political intrigues and Juana's possible political posture in support of the comunero uprising, Elena Gascón Vera points at her failure to exert power given the context of her female condition and upbringing. In fact, even though earlier interpretations of Juana focused only on her madness, the influence of feminism into public discourse brought about a change, and madness is mostly regarded from the point of view of marginalization.
The...