Acceso usuarios
Matthew V. Desing
This study approaches the topic of social space in medieval literature by examining the thirteenth-century Castilian Libro de Apolonio in relation to its presumed Latin source text, the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri. Both versions of the legend portray the travels of the young protagonist, Apolonio, his wife Luciana, and their daughter Tarsiana. Their journeys take the action to several cities across the eastern Mediterranean, and within these urban locales, the poet portrays many individual locations including roads, ports, courts, town squares, markets, a convent, a cemetery, and a brothel. Many of these places are adjacent to urban centers, in other words, they are located at the fringes or outskirts of the cities themselves. This study focuses on two scenes in the city of Pentapolis in which the poet takes narrative action that had occurred within the urban center in the Latin source text and moves it to the edges of the city within his vernacular rendition. These displacements on the part of the Castilian poet have repercussions for the portrayal of gender and authority in these scenes. In particular, the following analysis shows that such shifts heighten the centrality of the princess Luciana in the spatial power dynamics of the city of Pentapolis and its surroundings.
