دانلود کتاب From Amazon queen to female knight: The development of the woman warrior in the “Amadís Cycle” [thesis]

While most scholars and students of Renaissance literature have at least a passing familiarity with the women warriors of the Orlando furioso, Gerusalemme liberata, and The Faerie Oueene, very few, including those who study Spanish literature, know of the women warriors that appear in one of the most influential literary works of the sixteenth century, the Amadis Cycle. Nevertheless, these woman warriors play a significant role throughout the later part of the Amadis Cycle, contributing to the development of those themes concerning religion, racial difference, gender, and honor.

The woman warrior first appears as Calafia, the Amazon queen of California, in Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo's sequel to Amadis de Gaula. the Sergas de Esplandián (1510). Feliciano de Silva, the most prolific writer of the Amadis continuations, introduced a new woman warrior in almost every one of his sequels. Although Pintiquinestra (Lisuarte de Grecia [1514]) and Xarandria (Florisel de Niguea Part IV [1551]) play relatively minor roles in their respective narratives, Zahara (Amadis de Grecia [1530]) and her daughter Alastraxerea (Florisel de Niguea Parts I and II [1532]) are major characters whose exploits contribute significantly to the texts' plot development, as is Pantasilea in Pedro de Luján's Silves de la Selva (1546). As the Cycle evolves, this woman warrior figure develops from an Amazon, defined by her affiliation with an all female community, to a female knight, characterized by her solitary pursuit of chivalric glory.

Montalvo's, Silva's, and Luján's use of the woman warrior figure to explore the issues of religious conversion, honor, and gender roles in their own texts reveal that they possessed a strong familiarity with the Amazon myth in its various manifestations. In their continuations of the Amadis Cycle. these three authors drew upon the tradition of the Amazon as representative of racial and gender difference to create their women warriors.