Tracing Texts - Episode 6: La Numancia by Miguel de Cervantes

Explicit content warning

02/17/17 • 36 min

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.

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Tracing Texts - Episode 5: The Femme Fatale’s Path in Amparo Dávila’s Short Story “La Celda”

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).

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undefined - Tracing Texts - Episode 7: Reforging a Forgotten Faith: The Femme Fatale’s Role in Revaluing Indigenous Religion in Elena Garro’s Los recuerdos del porvenir

Tracing Texts - Episode 7: Reforging a Forgotten Faith: The Femme Fatale’s Role in Revaluing Indigenous Religion in Elena Garro’s Los recuerdos del porvenir

In this podcast, Sylvia and Anton discuss Elena Garro’s novel, Los Recuerdos del porvenir (1963), which gives an account of the Mexican Revolution’s aftermath and challenges patriarchal depictions of the non-passive woman to question accepted notions of femininity. By refashioning the femme fatale, Garro offers a different reading of the historical record and critiques hegemonic Western masculine discourses, while also providing an aperture for reinstating and endowing Nahuatl religious practices with value and continued meaning.