Three Spanish Querelle Texts – Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers

Emily C. Francomano is Associate Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University, where she also teaches in the Medieval Studies and Comparative Literature programs.  She is the author of Wisdom and Her Lovers in Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature (2008) as well as articles on Cárcel de amor, the Libro de buen amor, Castilian vernacular Bibles, and medieval romance (Catalan, French, and Spanish).

"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. And 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."

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 1I Pere Torrellas, Maldezir de mugeres 54Pere Torrellas, The Slander against Women 55II Pere Torrellas, Razonamiento de Pere Torrella en defensión de las donas contra los maldezientes 66Pere Torrellas, The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers 67III Juan de Flores, Grisel y Mirabella 86Juan de Flores, Grisel and Mirabella 87Bibliography 179Index 195