Resumen de Idealizing Wounds: Reality and Fiction in the Depiction of Injuries in El Victorial

Grant Gearhart

• This article examines how Gutierre Díez de Games¿s El Victorial (c. 1448) elevates the masculine exemplarity of Pero Niño in three key battles in which he is wounded. By swinging between a realistic and an idealistic portrayal of heroic behavior, each battle scene uniquely describes a climactic wounding that underscores the hero¿s hardiness and reveals his capacity to overcome human vulnerability. While not characterized as indestructible, he confronts injury and death bravely from the time he is a fledging knight, and therefore his wounds idealize and elevate his masculinity, and ultimately transform him into a male exemplar.