Picaras, moriscas and conversas: The double-marginalization of the 'Oriental other' in Spain's Early Modern picaresque novel

In this project, I explore the picara's representation as both prostitute and woman of hybrid origins. I argue that the picara's representation as a racialized prostitute is designed to generate a distorted mirror image of those aspects of society that do not fit within the idea of a homogeneous Christian/European Spain. The situation of Spain during the Early Modern period posits a challenge when evaluating its multicultural background. Although the Spanish state strived to create an image of a Spain pure and free of Oriental cultures, the presence of these cultures in various aspects of Spanish life gives evidence of the fact that there was indeed a cultural contact from which Iberian culture borrowed and adapted aspects of Muslim culture. The application of postcolonial theory and recent cultural studies theory is an important tool for understanding the tensions and strains that this cultural contact brings into the formation of a European/Spanish identity as a nation. Literary production, such as the picaresque novel, delves into problematizations of identity through its marginal characters. In the case of the female picaresque novel, the double-marginalization of the protagonist becomes apparent. The crafting of this double-marginalization is achieved through the exposition of an ambivalent attitude toward the picara of both fascination and repulsion, reflecting the dynamics of desire between the male/subject and the woman/object, as well as the attitudes that the Christian community had toward the ethnic minorities of the Iberian Peninsula. This dissertation focuses on the analysis of the following works: La Lozana andaluza by Francisco Delicado (1528), La picara Justina by Lopez de Ubeda (1605), and La hija de la Celestina by Alonso Jeronimo de Salas Barbadillo (1612). In their portrayal of the three main picaras, Lozana, Justina and Elena, the diegetic masculine voices take advantage of prevalent stereotypes and perceptions about the Muslim and Jewish communities. All three of these picaras are products of a long tradition of maurophilia and maurophobia in Spanish literary production. They are alluring in their beauty (due to maurophilia) and objectified, demonized and exploited without fear of reprimand (due to maurophobia). The historical context within which these works are written only exacerbates these maurophilic and maurophobic tendencies. Contextualized within the fantasy of the nation, the picara is that which Spain as European nation should not be.