La burladora de Toledo by Angelina Muñiz-Huberman
2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2009.0119
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
Resumo, be awriter only ifhe/she writes his 1 toricalnovels). All inall, Fabula Rasa , is a charming, kaleidoscopic, and 1 comprehensive view of transition in i Serbia today. [ Svetlana Tomic i Bethesda, Maryland i Angelina Muniz-Huberman. La burla , dora de Toledo. Mexico City. Planeta. 1 2008. 310 pages. $24.95 isbn978-970 ! 37-0728-7 i Those who are already familiar with the work of Angelina Muniz-Huber i man will find thisa novel ofprovoc , ative and suggestive content. As in 1 her earlier novels, Muniz-Huberman i sets out to transgress the boundar 1 ies imposed by society on the indi i vidual. The marked emphasis on the [ abuses of the Holy Office as itasserts i its"purity ofblood," resulting in the , massive exodus of Jews, becomes a 1 metaphor for intolerance and repres i sion through the centuries, includ 1 ing the present one. i La burladoradeToledo takesplace ' in Spain in the late sixteenth centu i ry, when individual freedoms were , threatened by the brutality of the i Holy Office, but time flowswithout , transition from the Renaissance to 1 the present and to the future, to i indicate the uninterrupted preva 1 lence of intolerance through the cen i turies. The story, based on a trial ! documented in the annals of the i Inquisition, tells of a woman named , Amba, born in 1545, the daughter 1 of an African slave and a converted , Jew. When hermistress dies, Amba 1 gains her freedom, takes the name 1 of her mistress, Elena de Cespedes, ' and embarks on an adventurous life. 1 Living indangerous times, thepro , tagonist, who is a hermaphrodite, 1 survives on her wits. As a woman, , she gets married and bears a son, 1 whom she abandons soon after birth. Officially recognized as a man, Eleno shows off a virile appearance, displaying a beard and wearing a soldier's uniform to camouflage his double sexual identity.At theWar of Alpujarras, he gains a reputa tion as a surgeon, taking care of the wounded. Eleno's bisexualism disconcerts thedoctors and judges who, unable todetermine his physiological char acter, accuse him of sexual duplicity, sodomy, and witchcraft. Like Don Juan Tenorio, Eleno acquires fame as a "burlador," who seduced women with falsepromises ofmarriage. Yet when this libertinesucceeds inbeing officially recognized as a man, he marries a woman, Maria del Cano. His victory, however, is short-lived since he is sentenced to ten years of working at a hospital-prison. While Cespedes's trialishistori cally documented, the companions of her adventures include such fic tional characters as Don Quijote. Muniz-Huberman creates an atmo sphere ofmagic realism toward the end of thenovel,when Yusuf Magus frees Elena/o to carry him/her in hismagic carpet tosafety inAmster dam, away from the clutches of the Inquisition. The ambiguity that character izes the protagonist's sexual orien tation (as bigamous, homosexual, transexual, travesti, androgynous, bigendered, chameleon-like) and her reliance on alchemy and supernatu ral events reflect the author's inten tion to transgress other boundaries, like those of linguistic and philo sophical nature to demonstrate that opposites can findharmony within a single entity (good/evil, angel/ devil, man/woman). La burlador a's erudition domi nates itsprose; thebook is saturated with encyclopedic referencesrelated to mysticism, Kabbalah, the Golem, i.\ in t;i \i)oi{\ TO I E DO \!!^? |i!Ki MtliVl/i IhImTIIKIII erotic discourse, and apocalyptic events. Its prevailing technique con sists of presenting the reader with multiple alternatives, set against obstacles. Like the protagonist, the style of the novel itself is trans gressive and escapes all traditional classification; more than a novel or a pseudo-novel, its abundant ver bal games, digressions, confessions, and autobiographic entriesmake La burladora de Toledo an unparalleled hermaphroditic novel. Nora Glickman Queens College and the Graduate Center,CUNY Kallia Papadaki. O ichos tou akalyp- E tou: Exi koinochristes istories. Ath- E ens. Polis. 2009. 277 pages. 15. isbn | 978-960-435-222-7 1 An interest in spatiality, especial- E ly as regards the contrast between E artificial and natural space (city E versus the country, cyberspace ver- E sus reality), has been increasing in E tandem with our growing realiza- E tion that the...
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