Persephone's Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature

Persephone's Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature. By Marcia L. Welles. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2000. 257 pages.

Impressive both in scope and in critical sophistication, Persephone's Girdle is a provocative work that forces readers to confront the violence that all too often remains hidden in literary texts. In the introduction, Marcia Welles recounts an anecdote regarding an anonymous friend's reaction to her explanation of the genesis of the study. When she credits a re-reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses for her interest in the topic of rape in literature, he reacts with astonishment. Just as she leads this reluctant friend to recognize the violence inherent in Ovid, she skillfully engages readers in her efforts to trace the signs of violence that mark seventeenth-century Spanish literary tradition.

The introduction sketches the evolution of the presentation of rape in literature, evoking sources ranging from Ovid to Lorca. She clearly details how women's bodies serve as sites of social and political exchange in mythological, historical, and literary narratives. Chapter i, "Rape and the Resolution of Class Conflict" offers a re-reading of Cervantes's La fuerza de la sangre that unveils the violence masked by traditional critical approaches highlighting the "metaphorical" or "allegorical" nature of this problematic novella.. Chapter ii focuses on "Rape and Revolution" as dramatized by Rojas Zorilla's Lucrecia y...