Hechiceras y brujas : su percepción y representación durante los siglos de oro españoles y su literatura

Details

Supervisors

Fabry, Geneviève

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale, à finalité spécialisée: sciences et métiers du livre (édition, librairie, bibliothèque)

Abstract

enThe Spanish Golden Age can be defined as culturally rich and historically turbulent. It stretches from the end of the 15th century to the mid-17th century and will be the scene of great social changes, great conquests, wars, climatic catastrophes, famines, and above all, the terrible witch-hunts. This last event, which swept through Europe as a whole, is of the utmost importance for this thesis. Indeed, in a century in which literary production reached unparalleled prestige, the figures of sorceresses and witches shaped the works of different authors, but the ghosts of these figures continue to appear. Nowadays we can notice that there is a reappropriation of these figures by feminist movements, and the saying "this is a witch hunt" has also become popular among individuals and political groups when they feel persecuted for their ideas. However, beyond the warlike use of this expression, we must consider that witch hunts are not an event of the past, but are still happening today in most parts of the world. The witch hunts of the Golden Age appear at first glance to be the result of the unity of a society to get rid of a common enemy, but it is in fact the attack of a system that divides in order to conquer. If on the one hand there have been several researches on the figure of witches in the sociological field, there have also been in the literary field. However, there is an important gap in terms of works that relate the two. However, in order to understand why witches and sorceresses are presented in the popular imagination in a specific way, it is interesting to approach the problem through these two prisms at the same time. Unfortunately, the problem of the figure of the witch in our society in comparison with its representation in literature is too extensive for us to analyse it as it should be, covering all the facets of the problem in a single thesis. For this reason we will concentrate in the framework of this work on the influence of the social values of the golden age on the representation of the sorceress and the witch as a literary figure. In other words, and more explicitly, we will answer the following research question: What is the practical influence of Spanish Golden Age values on the representation of witches and sorceresses in literature? Our hypothesis is that in most cases, golden values do have a more or less important practical influence on the representation of sorceresses and witches in Spanish golden literature, although this influence is different from work to work.