Proposal and objectives

This project proposes, on the one hand, the creation of a dataset that categorizes the scenes of violence (and their solutions) in the pastoral novels written in Spanish between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in the courtly novels included in these works. On the other hand, based on this dataset, the project offers a diachronic analysis of the inclusion of violence in these interwoven literary genres. The project proposes the categories of ‘deactivation’, ‘reversal’ and ‘legitimation’ to analyze the solutions offered to scenes of violence, and a typology for the ‘distancing devices’ used in the representation of violent scenes. Based on the categorization and analysis of solutions, the project develops the concept of ‘narrative economy of violence’, understood as a narrative regulation of violence that allows plots to be resolved with a happy ending, and studies the evolution of the representation of violence in these literary genres combining close reading and cross-reference data.

Beyond the literary approach, the project proposes a multidisciplinary understanding of these strategies bringing together literature, historical sociology and gender studies. Taking into account the social structures of Golden Age Spain and the concrete context of the production and consumption of these genre, the project addresses the following questions: Against which specific groups is violence in these literary genres most often directed? Who enacts it? In what contexts? Are there different narrative ‘solutions’ provided to resolve violence according to the gender of the victim and the gender of the perpetrator? The project aims to contribute to a broad analysis of the interplay between the dictates of the Spanish society in the 16th and 17th centuries and the structure of the ‘idealistic’ narrative genres of the period and is also intended as an invitation to generate a bibliography on this literary tradition that has been little studied.