BiblioVault - Books by Francomano, Emily C.

The Iberian Apollonius of Tyre

Emily C. Francomano

Harvard University Press, 2024

A new translation of two medieval Spanish versions of the tale of Apollonius, a story central to the premodern literary imagination and a source for Shakespeare’s Pericles.

Incest, riddling, piracy, prostitution, shipwreck, Lazarus-like resuscitation, and seductive musical performances—the story of King Apollonius and his wanderings, with its riveting plot twists, has been told and retold in many languages since its late antique composition. No conventional romance hero, Apollonius proves his mettle not on the battlefield but through study, sport, music, and courtliness. The equally studious and courtly heroines of the romance—Luciana and Tarsiana, Apollonius’s wife and daughter—embark on their own adventures before the family reunites. Throughout, the king’s trials are cast as a Christian allegory of fortune.

Two Castillian versions are included in The Iberian Apollonius of Tyre. The thirteenth-century poem known as The Book of Apollonius, a creative adaptation by an unknown cleric, focuses on Apollonius as a pilgrim figure and Christianizes the narrative. The fifteenth-century prose Life and History of King Apollonius, a highly literal translation of the Latin Gesta Romanorum text by an anonymous Aragonese translator, is representative of vernacular humanism and linked with the genre of the short chivalric tale.

This volume presents new editions and English translations of these two complete, standalone medieval Spanish versions of the ancient legend.

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Three Spanish Querelle Texts

Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers

Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores

Iter Press, 2013

This bilingual edition of the Three Spanish Querelle Texts is very well-conceived and will attract a wide audience among specialists and non-specialists alike. Francomano provides the first modern English translations of texts that enjoyed European-wide celebrity in the early sixteenth century. Her introduction is the best available summary of our knowledge about Torrellas’ two texts and Flores’ Grisel y Mirabella. Her translations are more readable than the Spanish texts, dividing Flores’ elaborate, rambling sentences into more comprehensible discourse. She often captures the tone of ambiguous or mock sincerity in the pleadings of both Flores’ and Torrellas’ characters. Francomano has a special sensitivity to the ludic quality of these discourses which helps readers appreciate their expression of “male anxiety” and “female agency” in the gender politics of their era.

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Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain

A Tribute to Barbara Mujica

Susan L. Fischer

University of Delaware Press, 2019

Although scholars often depict early modern Spanish women as victims, history and fiction of the period are filled with examples of women who defended their God-given right to make their own decisions and to define their own identities. The essays in Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain examine many such examples, demonstrating how women battled the status quo, defended certain causes, challenged authority, and broke barriers. Such women did not necessarily engage in masculine pursuits, but often used cultural production and engaged in social subversion to exercise resistance in the home, in the convent, on stage, or at their writing desks.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

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