1
This social constructionist view is opposed by essentialist historians who maintain that homosexual identity is an inherent transhistorical essence.
2
Carrasco affirms the existence of homosexual ghettos in sixteenth through eighteenth-century Valencia. He bases his assertions on the testimony given by accused sodomites before the Inquisition regarding where homosexuals would congregate, who their partners were, their demeanor, and secret signs they used to recognize and communicate with each other.
3
It is along these lines, and mainly in terms of the contemporary period, that Said's work has created an ongoing polemic. Without wishing to reduce the scope and importance of what is otherwise mainly an academic problem, I refer readers to two salient critics of Said: Aijaz Ahmad's abridged «Orientalism and After», Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia UP, 1994): 162-171; and Homi K. Bhabha, «The Other Question. Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism», The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994): 66-84.
4
Albert Mas contextualizes further the figure of the Turk in other Cervantine works in Vol. 1 of his Les turcs dans la littérature espagnole du siècle d'or (Paris: Institut d'Etudes Hispaniques, 1967): 289-383.
5
Bunes Ibarra explains that to contemporary Christians (such
as Haedo, Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, Antonio Fajardo y
Acevedo and others) Christian apostates were the greatest sodomites of all:
«Según este tipo de testimonios,
cualquier cristiano que reniega de sus principios adquiere con la
circuncisión buena parte de los vicios y defectos de los musulmanes. Al
residir y convivir con los moros y turcos, que se dan a la sodomía sin
ningún perjuicio y a la luz del día, se va confundiendo su moral
hasta llegar a aceptar este tipo de prácticas sexuales como cosa
natural»
(239).
6
See Pedro Aznar Cardona's Expulsión justificada de los moriscos españoles (Huesca, 1612) and Bernardo Pérez de Chinchón's Libro llamado Antialcoran, que quiere dezir contra el Alcoran de Mahoma (Valencia, 1532). The greater context for the Catholic church's historical relation to homosexuality has been updated by Uta Ranke-Heinemann in Eunucos por el reino de los cielos, trans. Víctor Abelardo Martínez de Lapera (Madrid: Trotta, 1994).
7
See Bartolomé and Lucile Bennassar's Les Chrétiens d'Allah (Paris: Perrin, 1989) for the most extensive treatment of Christian apostates during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
8
Portions of this paper are extracted, revised, and refocused from a longer comparative study that seeks out commonalities at the level of deep structure between Don Quixote and Don Juan («The Body in Context», infra).
9
In his stimulating contribution to Quixotic Desire, «Cervantes and the Unconscious», Carroll mentions that he and I sometimes differ on details (84). That is true. We nevertheless have in common our admiration for Cervantes, and we have remained friends for more than twenty years despite our differences. Moreover, we are in full agreement that Louis Combet goes too far in his intimations of homoeroticism in the Quijote.
10
For a study of sixteenth-century Seville as a city of «sharpening conflicts», of patriarchy in crisis, see «Neither Broken Sword Nor Wandering Woman» in Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, 3-13.