Androgyny in the Spanish Pastoral Novels

John T. Cull

Renaissance pastoral has been called a palimpsest: literally, one text written over another (Randel). In order to evoke the pastoral ambiance, the writer must assimilate and appropriate those conventions from the classical tradition that define the canon of pastoral literature. Whether these conventions are imitated sincerely or ironically mocked, they must be acknowledged and manipulated by later writers in order to signal to the reader the values and codes that hold sway in that particular mode of literature. In general, the mimetic homage paid to the weight of tradition poses no problems, as both author and reader fully expect to find the recreation of familiar commonplaces that denote genre or mode. However, one particular convention of Theocritean and Virgilian pastoral, homosexual love, is almost universally rejected by Christian writers of the Renaissance. Nevertheless, in order to keep a foot firmly rooted in the hallowed soil of convention and antiquity, Renaissance pastoral conflates classical precepts and Neoplatonic theories to teasingly acknowledge pastoral's homosexual love ideal through the creation of the androgyne. This study will examine the forms and function of androgyny in the Spanish pastoral novel.

Classical pastoral does not revel in the «perversion of the natural order» with which Christianity brands the pecado nefando of homosexual love (Poggioli 62-63). Instead, it tolerates this form of sexual indulgence, free from the anguish of passionate love, on purely functional grounds. The highest value embraced by ancient pastoral poetry is otium, a kind of timeless and worry-free leisure (Rosenmeyer 65-97). Poets such as Virgil and Theocritus allowed brief homosexual encounters, free from the elaborate rites and complications of heterosexual relationships, because they were the least disruptive to the enjoyment of the stasis of the moment. Anything that seriously threatens otium is banished from the classical pastoral pleasance. Renaissance authors who inherited this bucolic landscape had therefore to suggest homosexuality in some attenuated fashion if their eclogues and idylls were to aspire towards authenticity¹.

Although it is difficult to gauge with accuracy the influence of Longus' pastoral romance, Daphnis and Chloe, on Renaissance pastoral, this late second- or early third-century forerunner of the pastoral novel offers a solution to the problem of delicately insinuating homosexual love: androgyny². The adolescent protagonists, at an age where sex differences are minimal, are mutually attracted by discovering the self in the other. Longus repeatedly emphasizes the feminine aspect of the shepherd Daphnis. The youth, on one occasion, is denigrated by Dorco, a rival to the affections of Chloe, as having «no more beard than a woman» (33). Chloe herself, on seeing the beautiful shepherd bathe, marvels at his beauty and softness: «he seemed of a sweet and beautiful aspect... And when she washed his back and shoulders the flesh yielded so softly and gently to her hand, that again and again she privily touched herself to see if hers were more delicate than his» (27). Another indication of androgyny in Longus, which usually takes the form of travesty or disguise in Renaissance pastoral, is transvestism: wearing the clothes of the opposite sex. In Daphnis and Chloe, it is done for no other reason than the pure and innocent joy of it:

The innocence of these adolescent games is not lasting, however. The allure of Daphnis is such that it inspires lust in Gnatho, a true homosexual. His praise of the boy's attributes could easily be mistaken for a typically Renaissance encomium of hyperbolic female beauty: «Do you not see his locks are like the hyacinths? and his eyes under the brows like diamonds burning in their golden sockets? how sweetly ruddy are his cheeks, and his mouth rowed with elephant-pearl? And what lover would not be fond to take from thence the sweetest kisses?» (215).

Gnatho's homosexuality is treated as a perversion in Daphnis and Chloe, and he is literally knocked down for his obscene temerity in propositioning ingenuous Daphnis (207). Though Longus handles love in a more openly erotic fashion than Renaissance authors, burdened by the constraints of Neoplatonic doctrines, his ideal love is unequivocally heterosexual and monogamous. In this, Longus is in absolute harmony with his successors in the Renaissance. The young couple observe the ways of brute beasts in love, but reason compels them to reject animal passion. They aspire towards something more ennobling. As Arthur Heiserman notes: «For human beings... nature takes its proper erotic course only through troubles that develop knowledge and culminate in marriage. In fact, this process of erotic maturation constitutes the action of Daphnis» (136). This lesson learned by Daphnis and Chloe (as well as by Teágenes and Cariclea in the Historia Etiópica), is precisely that intended by the endless conflicts between the theory and practice of love in the Spanish pastoral novels. Androgyny in these books functions in part as a middle point between the vicious extreme of homosexuality, rejected out of hand in Renaissance pastoral, and the socially productive extreme of monogamous heterosexual bonding in matrimony. Literary androgyny is, then, a step on the road from self to society; from innocence to experience; from carefree adolescence to responsible adulthood. Before examining the manifestations of androgyny in the Spanish pastoral novels, it will be helpful to take a more detailed look at the nature of the androgyne.

Etymologically, the androgyne is simply the «man-woman», or hermaphrodite. Androgyny can be understood in a physical or psychological sense and has broad expression in myth, religion, and popular culture. A working definition is offered by June Singer. The androgyne is «the One which contains the Two; namely, the male (andró-) and the female (gyne). Androgyny is an archetype inherent in the human psyche» (20). The true androgyne is equally male and female, a person of ambiguous sexuality. In popular manifestations, however, androgyny is a term applied to all those who do not fit the mold of being stereotypically male or female. Some of these pseudo-androgynes include «the eunuch, the transvestite (or sexual masqueraders), the figure who undergoes a sex change or exchanges his sex with that of a person of the opposite sex, the pregnant male, the alternating androgyne (male for a period of time, female for a period of time), and twins» (O'Flaherty 284).

We are socially conditioned to associate androgyny almost exclusively with the effeminate male. Nevertheless, this phenomenon has very ancient ties to the manly woman. For Western civilization, we need only point to the widely diffused myth of the Amazons. Unlike the androgynous shepherds who are in a state of transition between adolescence and adulthood, but who ultimately reconcile their lawless urges within the sanctioned boundaries of marriage, the Amazons are true rebels and pose a serious threat to social stability (Tyrrell 88-112). In the pastoral romance, the figure of the Amazon is stripped of its emasculating potential. The huntress who lives on the periphery of society and slays wild men (unrestrained sexuality) exists, but she is ultimately assimilated into the fabric of society by acceding to her male-assigned role as wife. This is the case, for example, with Felismena in La Diana. There is another kind of potential Amazon that populates the pastoral bower: the nymph who symbolizes chastity and is a warrior and devotee of the goddess Diana. But these are superhuman creatures who are not affected by human frailty in controlling their erotic impulses. These are perhaps the only legitimate androgynes in the pastoral novels, since «true androgynes have no erotic possibilities» (O'Flaherty 291).

Renaissance pastoral, with its theoretical grounding in Neoplatonic love, has often been interpreted as a denial of sexuality. However, the frequent explosions of amorous violence in the Spanish pastoral novel, both inside and outside the pastoral pleasance, makes untenable this critical commonplace (Cull). In fact, the androgyny rampant in the pastoral romances, especially in its travesty variation, can be seen as a means to evoke both a purely essential eroticism, without regard to gender, and a device to create reader discomfort with a world topsy-turvy, where men masquerade as women, and women as men (Horowitz, «'Old Knights'» 254-57)³. However, any teasing hint at homosexuality is resolved in the end, as gender-appropriate behavior is restored to the characters who bring the romance to closure, often with a discovery of their true identity.

The protagonists of the pastoral novels learn to bridle their lascivious instincts and channel them into the socially productive institution of matrimony. The other is no longer seen as a narcissistic reflection of the self but is appreciated as a distinct and complementary equal. Ruth El Saffar explains how this transformation works for La Galatea: «When the other is recognized in all his or her imperfection, in other words, as an expression of God but not God himself, a signal is given within the story that the author outside it has assumed a like attitude toward the literary artifact, which becomes in turn an instrument of the expression of Truth and not itself its bearer» (Beyond Fiction 6)⁴. Pastoral, conventionally the domain of the young and unmarried, is consequently liminal by nature. Absolute closure is impossible, and it is for this reason that most of the Spanish novelists promised, but did not deliver, a continuation. The idyllic pastoral interlude ends where society intrudes.

If the pastoral manifestations of androgyny are little more than a children's game, an innocent though suggestive phase in sexual awakening and initiation, why did the moralists object so vehemently to this archetypal rite of transition? The condemnation of these «libros lascivos y profanos» took many forms. One of the better-known attacks is that of Malón de Chaide in La conversión de la Magdalena (1592). Pastoral romances are homicidal, a «cuchillo en poder del hombre furioso» (1: 24). Malón de Chaide rejects the argument that pastoral love is pure and honest:

It is clear that Malón de Chaide objects to the pastoral romances as textbooks of illicit love that corrupt their young readers.

The vogue of the pastoral novel in Spain (1559-1633) coincides generally with a period of enormous political, social, and economic upheaval in the Peninsula. The leisure depicted in the pastoral romances lent a sort of dignity and romanticization to the problems of vagrancy in the cities⁵. More serious still, in the eyes of the guardians of public morality, was the incontrovertible evidence all around them that Spain was rapidly being transformed from a martial, heroic society, into a degenerate, pusillanimous world gone completely mad. That is to say, all signs pointed to the horrifying conclusion that Spain had become a decadent and effeminate society⁶. It is little wonder, then, that the androgynous shepherds and shepherdesses suffered the disapproval of the moralists, who saw in them a glorification of the humiliating reality surrounding them and ravaging the social order. Alonso Núñez de Reinoso expresses these misgivings best in his Historia de los amores de Clareo y Florisea y de los trabajos de Isea (1552). From the type of love depicted in the pastoral romances: «no se saca más que hacerse los hombres mujeriegos y afeminados hasta convertirse en flacas y débiles doncellas... andar con sortejicas, con ramicos, con rosas, con olores, con plumicas, con motetes y con otras mil niñerías, vistiéndose en hábito de mujeres, y afeminándose» (quoted from López Estrada 357). A final factor that may or may not have entered into the vituperation of androgyny in the pastoral novels on the part of the later moralists is the threat it may have seemed to pose to religious orthodoxy. The Protestant mysticism of Jacob Behmen (1575-1624) and his followers in the seventeenth-century rekindled the cult of androgyne Adam (Zolla 30).

It is a critical commonplace that the Spanish pastoral romance relies heavily on the Renaissance love treatises for its conception of love⁷ and, by extension, its interest in androgyny. Nevertheless, it is also true that the androgyne is not necessarily a positive figure in these treatises. León Hebreo, for example, blames the birth of the hermaphrodite on an infortuitous conjunction of the stars: «lo hacen inclinado a bestial y no natural libídine, y éstos son los que aman a los varones y no se avergüenzan de ser agentes y pacientes juntamente, haciendo oficio, no solamente de macho, pero también de hembra; y éste tal se llama Hermafrodito, que quiere decir persona del un sexo y del otro» (130). This ending definition makes it clear that we should understand hermaphrodite as synonymous with androgyne.

Baldesar Castiglione, perhaps an even stronger influence on the Spanish pastoral novelists than Hebreo, has a number of passages that rail against effeminate men. At the same time, however, his ideal courtier retains some degree of androgyny. Consider, for example, this passage on the ideal countenance of the courtier:

The ignoble androgyne thus exists side by side in the love manuals with the more idealistic image of the androgyne that consists of the Two in the One, reconciling male and female in a harmonious whole. This ambivalence towards the androgyne in theory and in action is also expressed in the Spanish pastoral romances.

Virtually all of the Spanish libros de pastores feature the androgyne in one guise or another. The textual evidence clearly contradicts Diana De Armas Wilson's baffling assertion that: «Of the many romances, chivalric and pastoral, scrutinized in Don Quixote's library, only The Nymphs of Henares... moves towards androgyny» (175). What follows is a classification of the different forms of androgyny manifested in the texts, with representative examples. Where no modern edition is available, I have modernized the orthography, with the exception of Montemayor's Diana and one passage from El pastor de Iberia that is intentionally rustic. Each category represented boasts numerous appearances in several different romances and is therefore more or less typical of the majority.

Crying and fainting are without doubt two of the most common symptoms of shepherds in love. Since these sentimental excesses are more often than not associated with women in Golden Age literature, the men who fall victim to them are sometimes viewed as effeminate, especially by those ignorant of the rules of courtly love. The swoons of enamored shepherds tend towards histrionics and even self-conscious parody. A typical paroxysm of a lover, surely intended to parallel the divine fury of the poets, is that of a shepherd in López de Enciso's Desengaño de celos (1586) who, «con un ansia, que el alma parecía arrancársele, dando crecidos gritos, y apasionados suspiros, se dejó caer en tierra, privado de todo su sentido» (f. 3r). That this type of behavior is more suited to women is acknowledged in Gonzalo de Saavedra's Los pastores del Betis (1633), when the shepherd Doristano breaks out in tears: «Revienta el alma por los ojos, los cuales dan las mujeriles muestras» (172). Conversely, the shepherds continually bemoan the disdainful shepherdess who, with hardened heart, like Salicio's Galatea «más dura que mármol» (121, v. 57), to their plaints, refuses to shed tears at their miserable plight.

Male beauty, the Goldilocks satirized in the passage from Castiglione, often surpasses mere hyperbole in the pastoral romances and becomes a true case of sexual ambiguity. It is natural that the barely pubescent shepherd will have some soft and delicate features. However, certain descriptions point clearly to the androgyne. For example, Livio, in Gálvez de Montalvo's El pastor de Fílida (1582), is portrayed as «uno que en hermosura de rostro y gallardía de miembros más cortesano mancebo que rústico pastor representaba; eran sus luengos cabellos más rubios que el fino ámbar, su rostro blanco y hermoso» (469). While the barb poked at soft city dwellers is transparent, this is a typical portrait of the literary shepherd. Gabriel de Corral, in La Cintia de Aranjuez (1629), posits an ideal of male beauty that is very much in keeping with pastoral's cherished goal of the aurea mediocritas: «el rostro (aunque en los hombres no es parte esencial para estimación) tan bien mezclado, que ni por lo hermoso es afeminado, ni por lo no visto horrible» (244). More often than not, the stunningly attractive male is viewed favorably in the novels, and often turns out to be the protagonist. Androgynous appearance is viewed positively, as long as it is not accompanied by ambivalent actions.

A repulsion towards the effeminate, perhaps a symptom of homophobia, is the opposite reaction to the pastoral androgyne. In Desengaño de celos, it is used to prove the fickleness of even the most constant lover: «si acaso a este tal le dijese, y se viese certificado, que la mujer a quien sirve es hombre... que aunque más perfectamente quiera, y más encarecido: yo os prometo, que al instante se resfriase tanto que cuando no la aborreciese hasta la muerte, no gustaría de verla más» (López de Enciso f. 232r). This same sense of disgust appears in Lope's La Arcadia (1598), where Rústico rebels at the feminization dictated by love's tyrannical laws. He allows that he would do almost anything for a woman, a necessary enemy, «como fuesen actos de nobleza y que cupiesen en el ser y excelencia de ser hombre, pero no enternecerme ni llorar con flaqueza mujeril; que de enseñar el corazón a esto viene el juicio a despeñarse» (109). Weakness in men of any sort is often ridiculed in the Spanish pastoral novels. The tormented lover should suffer in silence, in a dignified and manly fashion. Bernardo de Balbuena, in Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erífile (1608), brands weakness in men as a sentiment «que al niño infama y la vejez afrenta» (72). Even the women decry obviously effeminate behavior in their pretenders. Cintia, the heroine of La Cintia de Aranjuez, has this to say about Mauricio's reaction to being bled: «que no me incliné jamás a hombre que dejase de parecerlo; y trataba por entretenimiento del melindre del doliente, preguntando si se había desmayado al sangrarse» (316). The gulf in attitudes then, between looking androgynous and acting that way, seems to parallel that between the appearance and reality of love in the pastoral novel.

Perspectivism, or the engaño de los ojos, is a favorite device in the pastoral novels for evoking the figure of the hermaphrodite. From a distance, the gender of the person approaching is indistinct. This is just one of the many techniques found in the pastoral romances that hint at the deceit of appearances in the falsely assuring pastoral landscape. El pastor de Fílida provides a typical example of the process: «por entre la espesura de sus ramas vio un bulto que no determinó si de pastor o de pastora fuese, y levantándose en pie, lo más quedo que pudo se fue acercando hasta llegar donde vio, el cuerpo en la tierra y en la mano la mejilla, una pastora, en tanto extremo hermosa» (Gálvez de Montalvo 450). There are several noteworthy variations on this device. In the Segunda parte de la Diana (1563) of Alonso Pérez, the rapidity with which an individual passes by, as well as a measure of natural androgyny, cause those present to question gender: «y viniendo a pasar por muy junto de donde nosotros estábamos, juzgamos o ser ninfa disfrazada en rostro de hermoso niño o niño transformado en rostro de bella ninfa: porque ni su hábito era en todo de varón, ni del todo estaba conforme a mujer vestida» (f. 75r). A final variation of the androgyne that results from the deceit of appearances is the shepherd or shepherdess who disguises the voice to imitate the opposite sex. Such is the case in González de Bobadilla's Ninfas y pastores de Henares (1587). Celinda pretends to be first Velanio, then Florino: «y por estar confiada en la oscuridad de la noche de que no podía ser conocida de vista, mudando la voz de delicada en grosera a imitación de tosco aldeano, le respondió de esta forma» (f. 50v).

The pseudo-Amazon, as we have already seen for Montemayor's Diana (1559), is perhaps the most frequent version of the mannish woman in the Spanish pastoral romances. These are not the fearsome man-haters of the mythical tribe who mutilate themselves as a visual emblem to their androgyny («ellas sus tetas cortando,/ fueron más valientes que él» [Gil Polo, Diana enamorada (1564) 242]). Rather, they are usually incredibly beautiful and valiant women who are on a pilgrimage or crusade to right some wrong that has been done to them. Their martial arts allow them to slay bestial men unable to control their carnal lusts. Once the masquerading Amazons have attained the lawful object of their desires, they conform to social expectations. The seeming wild woman often performs her violent deeds while dressed as a man. Fortuna, the protagonist of Los diez libros de Fortuna de amor (1573), disguised as Beliseo, and armed only with a shepherd's crook (cayado), «a golpes muchos turcos ha derribado» (Lofrasso f. 127v). It is as if the donning of masculine garb confers upon its wearer admissible virile powers. Virtually the same message is conveyed by González de Bobadilla: «Quien vio jamás en pastora / tal valor y fuerza tanta / pues en traje de varón /en un punto se trasplanta» (f. 198r). Unbridled emotion is another mask under which it is permissible for women to act as savagely as men. Marfisa, in El pastor de Iberia (1591), erroneously believing that her beloved Filardo is dead, vows revenge with her «femenil mano» (Vega f. 84r). She kills the one she thinks is responsible with her knife but is never held accountable for her homicide. In fact, man-murdering women are a fairly common feature of the Spanish pastoral novels.

The inversion of sexual roles is a form of androgyny in these verse and prose books that is quite similar to the Amazon. Usually, this takes the form of an anti-feminist comment. For example, in Desengaño de celos, the following remark is made about a shepherdess that is intended as a compliment: «pero ella tuvo ánimo más que de hembra» (López de Enciso f. 163r). Not surprisingly, there is no lack of misogynistic diatribes against the power of women to emasculate men figuratively in these novels. One such passage begins as follows in La constante Amarilis (1609): «Mas, o mujeres, ruina del varonil valor, polilla de su virtud y fama, varias, mudables y embarazosas» (Suárez de Figueroa 28). On the other hand, when men are the ones acting out what «normally» constitute female roles, it frequently involves a shepherd who submissively accepts a parental decision to marry him off to a serrana type, even though he ardently loves another. In Ninfas y pastores de Henares, Melampo's mother Delia wants him to wed a «monstruo mal nacido» (González de Bobadilla f. 29r) because of her pastoral wealth: numerous goats. In the same novel, Pelusino's father orders him, against his will, to marry «una rica y deforme pastora» (f. 144v).

Travesty is one of the most common strategies for intimating the androgyne in the pastoral novel. It is unusual not to find women disguised as men in these romances. At times, these attempts fail, since true gender shows through. When Celida dresses up as Lerio in the Desengaño de celos, her beauty betrays her: «Albisa, mirando al engañoso Lerio, quedó espantada de su grande hermosura» (López de Enciso f. 158v). To avoid discovery, and appear more manly, the shepherdess will sometimes cut off her hair, an act that symbolically negates sexuality. In Tejeda's Diana (1627), largely a plagiarism of Gil Polo, we find Rotilda, who «cortó sus hermosos cabellos y disfrazada en hábito de varón» (1: 248), went off to find her husband. She was so convincing as a man that Libia, daughter of the king, fell in love with counterfeited «Rotildo». El pastor de Iberia, on the other hand, is one of the few romances that allow a male to adopt a feminine disguise. Filardo is in jail and needs two witnesses to testify on his behalf. Marfisa devises an ingenious strategy. She enters the jail, dresses Filardo in her caperuza, and gains him the freedom to go and secretly testify on his own behalf since he is unknown in the town. He is so convincing as «Marfisa», that Antandro, one of her suitors, asks him / her to keep a promise, to which disguised Filardo responds «mañana». Marfisa then borrows Filardo's clothes, and pretending to be a boy named Elisio, she goes to town to be the second witness. In a scene that evokes the whole of the serrana tradition, rustic Domenga believes Marfisa to be Filardo and takes the role of aggressor: «por huerça me aveys de querer» (Vega f. 139r). Naturally, feigned Filardo also counters with «mañana». This novel is also interesting in that Bernardo de la Vega explicitly deflates the air of eroticism that he teasingly creates. Our protagonists are condemned to chastity until such time as they legitimize their yearnings through matrimony: «habían propuesto con las almas (aunque no lo dijeron con las lenguas) de no pasar del honesto límite hasta llegar al matrimonio santo» (f. 137v).

Homosexuality is at least suggested when the result of travesty, such as in the case of Rotilda/Rotildo above, is that a person unknowingly falls in love with a person of the same sex. In most instances, the victim's very ignorance of the gender of the beloved attenuates the shock, and excuses the blunder. After all, Neoplatonic theories allow that one capitulates to beauty wherever it is found. What is surprising, however, is the occurrence of more daring homosexual leanings. Although not frequent in the Spanish pastoral novels, it does happen at times that a woman openly admires or yearns for another woman (never a man for another man).

One example is found in Ponce's La clara Diana a lo divino (1599): «estaba allí su mujer junto con él, sentada en un rico estrado, la cual era en todo tan hermosa y acabada, que a mí con ser mujer me cautivó los ojos» (f. 301v). The language is neutral and ambiguous enough to allow several interpretations. However, there is no chance of misreading the attraction between Selvagia and Ismenia in Montemayor's Diana. Selvagia knows that it is another woman that captivates her, even though she initially sees no more than the eyes, and in spite of the fact that Ismenia later pretends to be a man (her cousin Alanio): «mil vezes estuve por hablalla, enamorada de unos hermosos ojos que solamente tenía descubiertos. Pues estando yo con toda la atención possible sacó la más hermosa y delicada mano que yo después acá he visto... estava más enamorada della de lo que podría dezir» (41). Selvagia swears her undying love to Ismenia before the latter pretends to be a man (42). Montemayor defuses this potentially explosive situation by making Ismenia a convincingly androgynous person: «y diziendo esto y quitándose el reboço vieron mis ojos un rostro que, aunque el aspecto fuese un poco varonil, su hermosura era tan grande que me espantó» (43). The narrator also tries to justify Selvagia's apparent homosexual tendencies through the description of Ismenia's cousin Alanio: «en el rostro y ojos y todo lo demás se le parescía tanto que si no fueran los dos de género diferente no huviera quien no juzgara el uno por el otro» (45). They are true androgynes, in the «twins» variation. Homosexuality is dangled before the reader's eyes in La Diana and other novels, but only as a come-on, and the authors are quick to withdraw from their suggestive illusions.

The narration of myths is an important way for Renaissance pastoral to keep in touch with its pagan and classical roots and occasionally provides another means to weave the androgyne into the pastoral fabric. We find this process at work in the continuation of the Diana penned by Alonso Pérez. One of the shepherds relates an anecdote of why Pan hated clothes so much. One day Hercules and his mate Iole were «recreándose en las sombrías selvas y amenos bosques». From on high, Pan spotted them dallying: «Vióla, y ardió en amores della» (f. 94r). Iole dressed Hercules in her clothes, and she robed herself in his. The two slept apart that night, cross-dressed. At midnight, lascivious Pan approached the one he thought to be Iole: «y alzadas las vestiduras en lugar de las blandas carnes halló áspero vello. Recordado Hércules del sueño, arrojó tal puñada al mísero amante que le derribó de la cama abajo» (f. 95r). Someone brought light, and all present ridiculed Pan. From that day forward, he hated clothes. Another example of the use of myth to insinuate androgyny is the Tragedias de amor (1607), which uses the ancient cult of Apollo to suggest the androgyny of the prepubescent male. These young boys were dedicated to the worship of Apollo: «en cuya veneración era costumbre antigua criar los mozos cabellera, hasta que la barba les comenzaba a apuntar, y entonces cortaban el cabello y le ofrecían al templo de Apolo Délfico» (Arze Solórzeno f. 20r). Finally, the Desengaño de celos suggests that at creation, man and woman were the same, completely undifferentiated: «Que cuando el hombre fue criado, y se le dio por compañera la mujer, que no había diferencia entre los dos, y que tan obligado era él a tener vergüenza y guardar la honestidad como ella, que no habían de ser preferidos ellos en eso, y usarse ahora, es por haber los hombres pervertido el orden natural, como inobedientes» (López de Enciso f. 235r-v). This is a curious statement since it suggests that androgyny is the natural condition of men and women, and if they are no longer androgynous, it is a symptom of the world topsy-turvy, just the opposite of what the moralists said.

These are the most important forms the androgyne takes in the Spanish pastoral romances. What remains is to venture a comment on its function. First and foremost, androgyny is a «safe» way to titillate the reading public and thereby ensure a degree of popularity and commercial success. At the same time, it places the work squarely within pastoral tradition by insinuating homosexual love. Nevertheless, the pastoral novel rarely delivers the explicit and «perverse» eroticism that is its potential. As a consequence, androgyny also has an important didactic function in the pastoral romances. By virtue of the androgyne's ultimate asexuality, it teaches restraint in the expression of passion.

Another function of androgyny is to serve as a warning that appearances are not to be trusted in the bower. The hedonistic ethic that constitutes a primary lure of the pastoral fiction is systematically debunked in these romances that have more of the moral-didactic than first meets the eye. Finally, in a literary mode that draws much of its appeal from an attempt to reconcile opposites (city/country, prose/poetry, realism/idealism, temporality/stasis, love's theory/love's practice, war/peace, reason/ passion, etc.), it is quite natural to find the androgyne, an attempt to reconcile male and female. The pastoral novel ultimately rejects the androgyne, however, unless it blossoms into a nubile, socially productive, gender-distinct individual. In its Neoplatonic celebration of beauty for its own sake, it is easy to see the appeal of the androgynous shepherds to young lovers of the Renaissance, whether manifested in literature or in painting⁸. Nevertheless, those immune to the excesses of unreflective passion, as Heliodorus reminds us in the epigraph that begins this essay, were quick to point out that beauty is always in the unreliable eyes of the beholder.

• Arze Solórzeno, Juan. Tragedias de amor, de gustoso y apacible entretenimiento de historias, fábulas, enredadas marañas, cantares, bailes, ingeniosas moralidades del enamorado Acrisio, y su zagala Lucidora. Madrid: Juan de la Cuesta, 1607.
• Atkinson, W. «Studies in Literary Decadence. III. The Pastoral Novel». Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 4 (1927): 117-26, 180-86.
• Balbuena, Bernardo de. Siglo de Oro en las selvas de Erífile. Madrid: Ibarra, 1821.
• Bennassar, Bartolomé. «La parte de los pobres y la de los pícaros». In La España del Siglo de Oro. Trans. Pablo Bordonava. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1983. 203-26.
• Casalduero, Joaquín. «La bucólica, la pastoril y el amor». In Estudios de literatura española, 2nd ed. Madrid: Gredos, 1967. 64-69.
• ——. «La Galatea», In Suma cervantina. Ed. J. B. Avalle-Arce and E. C. Riley. London: Tamesis, 1973. 27-46.
• Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959.
• Chevalier, Maxime. «La Diana de Montemayor y su público en la España del siglo XVI». In Creación y público en la literatura española. Ed. J.-F. Botrel and S. Salaün. Madrid: Castalia, 1974. 40-55.
• Corral, Gabriel de. La Cintia de Aranjuez, prosa y versos. Ed. Joaquín de Entrambasaguas. Biblioteca de Antiguos Libros Hispánicos 4. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1945.
• Cull, John T. «Further Aspects of Violence in the Spanish Pastoral Novel». In El tema de la violencia en las literaturas hispánicas. Ed. Juan Cruz Mendizábal. Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference on Hispanic Literatures at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Indiana, PA: University, 1984. 58-68.
• El Saffar, Ruth. Beyond Fiction: The Recovery of the Feminine in the Novels of Cervantes. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.
• ——. «The Truth of the Matter: The Place of Romance in the Works of Cervantes». In Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes. Ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1985. 238-52.
• Gálvez de Montalvo, Luis. El pastor de Fílida, NBAE 7. Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1907.
• Gil Polo, Gaspar. Diana enamorada (1564) Together with the English Translation (1598) by Bartholomew Yong. Ed. Raymond L. Grismer and Mildred B. Grismer. Minneapolis: Burgess, 1959.
• González de Bobadilla, Bernardo. Primera parte de las ninfas y pastores de Henares. Dividida en seis libros. Alcalá de Henares: Juan Gracián, 1587.
• Hebreo, León. Diálogos de amor. Trans. Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe Argentina, 1947.
• Heiserman, Arthur. The Novel before the Novel: Essays and Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1977.
• Heliodorus of Emesa. Historia Etiópica de los amores de Teágenes y Cariclea. Trans. Fernando de Mena. Ed. Francisco López Estrada. Biblioteca Selecta de Clásicos Españoles Serie II, 14. Madrid: Aldus, 1954.
• Horowitz, Louise K. Honoré d'Urfé. TWAS 698. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.
• ——. «Where Have all the 'Old Knights' Gone?: L'Astrée». In Romance: Generic Transformation from Chrétien de Troyes to Cervantes. Ed. Kevin Brownlee and Marina Scordilis Brownlee. Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1985. 253-64.
• Lofrasso, Antonio de. Los diez libros de Fortuna de amor. Barcelona: Pedro Malo, 1573.
• Longus. Daphnis and Chloe. Trans. George Thornley. Ed. J. M. Edmonds. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1962.
• López de Enciso, Bartolomé. Desengaño de celos. Madrid: Francisco Sánchez, 1586.
• López Estrada, Francisco. Los libros de pastores en la literatura española: La órbita previa. Madrid: Gredos, 1974.
• Malón de Chaide, Pedro. La conversión de la Magdalena, Ed. P. Félix García. 3rd ed. 3 vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1959.
• Montemayor, Jorge de. Los siete libros de la Diana, Ed. Enrique Moreno Báez. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976.
• O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980.
• Patterson, Annabel. Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry. Berkeley: U of California P, 1987.
• Pérez, Alonso. Segunda parte de la Diana. Antwerp: Pedro Bellero, 1581.
• Poggioli, Renato. The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.
• Ponce, Bartolomé. Primera parte de la clara Diana a lo divino, repartida en siete libros. Zaragoza: Lorenzo de Robles, 1599.
• Randel, Mary Gaylord. «Reading the Pastoral Palimpsest: La Galatea in Góngora's Soledad Primera». Symposium 36.1 (1982): 71-91.
• Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973.
• Saavedra, Gonzalo de. Los pastores del Betis, versos y prosas de don Gonzalo de Saavedra, Trans. Lorenzo Valerte, 1633.
• Singer, June. Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976.
• Suárez de Figueroa, Cristóbal. La constante Amarilis. Madrid: Antonio de Sancha, 1781.
• Tejeda, Jerónimo de. La Diana de Montemayor. Paris: n. p., 1627.
• Tyrrell, Wm. Blake. Amazons: A Study in Athenian Mythmaking. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984.
• Vega, Bernardo de la. El pastor de Iberia. Sevilla: Juan de León, 1591.
• Vega, Garcilaso de la. Poesías castellanas completas. Ed. Elías L. Rivers. Madrid: Castalia, 1969.
• Vega, Lope de. Arcadia. Ed. Edwin S. Morby. Madrid: Castalia, 1975.
• Wilson, Diana De Armas. «Cervantes's Labors of Persiles: 'Working (In) The In-Between'». In Literary Theory / Renaissance Texts. Ed. Patricia Parker and David Quint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 150-81.
• Zolla, Elémire. The Androgyne: Reconciliation of Male and Female. New York: Crossroad, 1981.