Women of the Prologue ― Imitation, Myth, and Magic in Don Quixote I

Carolyn Nadeau examines the significance of the sources cited for female characterization in the Prologue and their relationship to Cervantes' writing style. When the anonymous friend suggests that Cervantes include Guevara's Lamia, Laida, and Flora; Ovid's Media; Homer's Calypso; and Virgil's Circe as models for specific types of women, he not only foregrounds the significance of these classical women for the female characters in the text but also partakes in the controversial debate of the value of imitatio at the historic juncture of Humanist and Modernist perspectives on cultural authority.

Carolyn A. Nadeau received her doctorate from Penn State University in 1994 and is an associate professor at Illinois Wesleyan University where she specializes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature. In addition to courses in Spanish language, literature, and culture, she teaches a Humanities and Literature in Translation program. Dr. Nadeau has written on mythological female figures in both the comedia and Don Quixote, the role of the wife and mother in sixteenth-century advice manuals, and food representation in the comedia.