Zoraida and Carcayona

Female Christian and Muslim Converts in Early Modern Spanish Literature

Abstract

Studies on the representation of Muslim women in early modern Spanish literature are not numerous, and aspects of their religious identities and conversions are usually less examined. This paper focuses on the role of female Muslim characters in texts written between the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in Spain. In these works the female protagonists convert to a new faith: One to Islam, the other to Christianity. In doing so, they cut ties with the fatherly figure in order to follow the new religion. My research attempts to answer two questions: What does the paternal house represent in regards to the faith that the daughters are rejecting? What role does Islam play in the different approach to female characters’ faith?

In order to carry out my study, I analyze two texts: The first one is La leyenda de la doncella Carcayona (Legend of the Damsel Carcayçiyona) (Aragon, c. 1587), where the protagonist, Carcayçiyona, abandons paganism for Islam; the second is Miguel de Cervantes’s “The Captive’s Tale” (“Historia del cautivo”), a novella inserted in his famous Don Quixote, Part I (Madrid, 1605), where Zoraida, the daughter of a wealthy and powerful Algerian Muslim, converts from Islam to Christianity.

By setting parallels among the female protagonists’ religious conversion and focusing on their voluntary estrangement from their fathers, I argue that in both texts, fathers represent the rejected faith while daughters are depicted as the carriers of the newly adopted religion, be it Islam or Christianity. More importantly, since in both cases women are formerly or newly converted Muslims, and the texts are produced in a Christian-ruled nation, this paper underscores the complexities of the encounters between Islam and Christianity in a Mediterranean setting.