Tracing Texts

The content of this episode is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s play La Numancia. Anton explores the idea of religion in this lesser-known play by Cervantes, which was written sometime in the mid-1580s. La Numancia is one of Cervantes’s earliest tragic plays, and it loosely based on the historical episode of the siege of the village of Numancia by the Romans.

This episode features a discussion of Amparo Dávila's short story "La Celda" from her collection "Tiempo Destrozado" published in 1959. The story's depiction of María Camino, the protagonist, could be interpreted as being a femme fatale, but our episode discusses how Dávila's narrative subtly challenges this archetypal representation. Dávila engages in a feminist critique of women’s roles in society. In particular, she addresses repressed feminine sexuality through the use of motifs like madness and characters like the femme fatale. Her writing is characterized by a gothic sensibility that "…submerges the reader in a world that defies rational explanation” (Hammond-Fernández 4).

In Episode 4, Anton discusses the life and work of Spanish poet, writer, artist, and intellectual, José Moreno Villa. Moreno Villa is most closely associated with the Generation of 1927 in Spanish Literature, which generally brings to mind important figures of the that period like García Lorca, Buñuel, and Dalí. Moreno Villa's "Jacinta la pelirroja" is a collection of poems that describe his failed romance with a woman named Florence from New York. In addition to the autobiographical nature of his poetry, Moreno Villa incorporates jazz elements into his poetry both with respect to imagery and rhythm.

This episode discusses the depiction of the femme fatale, as an archetypal character, along with some of the myths and folkloric elements that gave rise to this representation. The purpose is to use this as a foundation for future discussions of texts that include depictions of the fatal woman in Spanish language literature.