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SUMMARY:Negotiating social and political righteousness through the myth of
  Don Juan in early twentieth-century Spain - Dr Samuel Llano (Modern and M
 edieval Languages)
DTSTART:20120118T120000Z
DTEND:20120118T140000Z
UID:TALK35214@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Rushworth
DESCRIPTION:Since the première and publication of Tirso de Molina's seven
 teenth-century play El burlador de Sevilla\, the story of Don Juan has bee
 n the object of multiple adaptations\, the most famous ones being Molière
 's Dom Juan and Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Thanks to these and many othe
 r works\, Don Juan has been able to convey a great variety of values and m
 eanings to many audiences across different times and places\, and has help
 ed to articulate diverse social and political discourses. In Spain\, since
  Zorrilla wrote his own adaptation in the mid-nineteenth century\, the Don
  Juan myth has become the object of an intense intellectual investment. Sp
 anish thinkers have situated Don Juan at the centre of heated debates on t
 he health of the nation\, and used it as the prism through which to observ
 e and tackle the 'ills' of Spain. The numerous writings published since th
 e 1920s by the prominent doctor Gregorio Marañon constitute a case in poi
 nt.\n\nIn this seminar\, however\, I would like to focus attention on the 
 role played by the many parodies of Don Juan that were premièred every ye
 ar in theatres all around Spain during the weeks following All Saints day.
  As I shall argue\, those parodies gave visibility\, in a humorous and see
 mingly unproblematic way\, to a series of social and political dilemmas th
 at found a more thorough and preoccupied expression in the writings of the
  aforementioned intellectuals. In particular\, I shall focus on parodies p
 remièred between 1900 and 1910\, in order to analyse how they anticipated
  some of the questions that the aforementioned Marañón would later make 
 widely known and\, at the same time\, how they echoed the concerns raised 
 by other intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century. Those questio
 ns and concerns have to do with the definition of gender identities and be
 haviours\, in a time when colonial losses and other 'disasters' were being
  explained as the result of gender confusion and\, more particularly\, a p
 erceived loss of collective virility.\n\nThrough techniques proper to paro
 dy\, such as transvestism and gender inversion\, the works analysed were a
 ble to tackle those problematics and reach out to audiences which largely 
 outnumbered the readership of Spanish intellectuals. Such is the case\, fo
 r example\, of Tenorio feminista (1907)\, in which a female Doña Juana Te
 norio substitutes her male counterpart and assumes attributes then conside
 red unfeminine. I shall as well focus on El Trust de los Tenorios (1910)\,
  since the attendance of king Alfonso XIII brings into the present discuss
 ion historical perceptions of the Spanish monarchy\, an institution which\
 , since the reign of Isabel II (1833-1968)\, had started to be regarded as
  "effeminate" and decadent. This paper discusses the nature and effects of
  parody\, which\, to some extent\, helped to legitimise social donjuanismo
  by deflecting ongoing debates on the Don Juan myth from their moral focus
  and drawing them towards questions of gender. This apparent contradiction
  finds explanation in Linda Hutcheon's description of parody as a genre th
 at performs\, at the same time\, a subversive and a conservative form of c
 riticism.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DT
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