Edited by Barbara Lopez-Mayhew, chair of the Department of Languages and Linguistics and professor of Spanish

“My book Valor, agravio y mujer (Valor, offence and woman) is an annotated and modernized edition of a seventeenth-century play written by Ana Caro Mallén de Soto,” explains Lopez-Mayhew. “The female protagonist of the play, Leonor, is courted under the pretense of marriage and then later abandoned by don Juan de Córdoba. She leaves her native Spain to follow her suitor to Flanders to avenge her dishonor. Once she arrives in Brussels, she disguises herself as a man, Leonardo, as part of her plan to recover her honor and force don Juan into a promised marriage or to kill him.

“Ana Caro was a contemporary of famous Spanish Golden Age authors Félix Lope de Vega and Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) and her play is now considered a literary masterpiece, although it had been marginalized for centuries because it had been written by a woman.”

Tags:  Ana Caro Ana Caro Mallen de Soto Barbara Lopez-Mayhew Valor Agravio y Mujer