Translating Spanishness: Courtiers, Pícaros, and Gypsies at the Crossroads of Spain and Italy Ca 1528-1622

Abstract

"Translating Spanishness: Courtiers, Pícaros, and Gypsies at the Crossroads of Spain and Italy ca 1528-1622” examines the role of printing and translation in the formation and transformation of early modern Spanish national identities and two of its principal literary forms: the early Comedia and the inchoate Picaresque. The Spanish cortegiano’s uniformed costuming is crucial to the construction of national identities, the shape shifting pícaro undermines projected national and class hierarchies, and the Gypsy, by definition, is always transforming and translating. Within this Spanishness, the texts examined suggest a steady progress from the vision of the Spanish cortegiano to the pícaro and the Gypsy. Each in its own way is a kind of “limit case,” a test case for the project of fashioning coherent national identities.