The Savage Imperium: Masculinity, Subversion and Violence in Carajicomedia

Abstract

THE anonymous work entitled Carajicomedia written at the beginning of the sixteenth century (c. 1506) was published in 1519 as part of the Cancionero de obras de burlas provocantes risa (Songbook of Risible Works of Mockery). (1) The text's crudeness immediately relegated it to discrete, almost invisible status in scholarly studies, position which it occupied until recently. Some critics have focused on the extreme sexuality of this violent poem. Alvaro Alonso, in the introduction to his edition of Carajicomedia, emphasizes its fealdad, violencia y la impotencia (33) arguing that sex appears in the text in form which is completely stripped of eroticism (32), point of view that Antonio Perez-Romero strongly disagrees with. For Perez-Romero, who rightly emphasizes the realism of Carajicomedia as class-based attack on the elitism of Juan de Mena's earlier text Laberinto de Fortuna, it is precisely the erotic nature of the text which strengthens its subversive character: Carajicomedia's anonymous author proposes moral laxity and the pleasure of sex and living (86). Yet, as I will argue, it is important to see how the violence and degradation which saturates the anonymous author's text not only wipes out an erotic reading, but actually risks, in its attempt to turn previous models of masculinity on their head, reinforcing those very same asymmetrical relationships of power and cannibalism. Carajicomedia has been seen as misogynistic pamphlet in which the author warns of the danger of unbridled female sexuality. Linde Brocato privileges, for example, its misogynistic aspects over its politically subversive character: If there is point to this world, it is misogynistic and not libertarian one: that women's insatiable desires render men impotent ... (349). Barbara Weissberger has rightly drawn our attention to the similarities between Juan de Mena's fear of female corruption of the fundamental values of the kingdom (as expressed in Laberinto de Fortuna) and the misogyny of the anonymous author of Carajicomedia. What she observes as masculine sexual anxieties in the case of the author of the Carajicomedia is related to direct criticism of queen Isabel the Catholic who adopted precisely the masculine values that Mena's text urged the male monarch to uphold (6). I will argue here that Carajicomedia presents crisis of masculinity that results in the humiliation of its protagonist Fajardo the purpose of which is not only to satirize the queen and her husband, but more importantly to undermine the pillars of their ideology. This indicates crisis of masculinity linked to deeper crisis in the new Spanish imperium. The obscene and burlesque elements of the text are here considered vehicles for political discourse that aims to subvert the models of masculinity propounded by nationalistic propaganda. For this purpose I will focus on the deflation of the emblematic figure of the male Christian hero Ruy Diaz de Vivar, known as the Cid as well as the implied criticism of the Reconquest itself. I will also focus on the elements that point to new forms of violence and Conquest. Carajicomedia initially presents itself to the reader as parody of Juan de Mena's Laberinto de Fortuna, (2) long allegorical political poem published 75 years earlier in 1444 with the propagandists purpose (3) of calling for an end to the internecine battles among Christians so that they might unite their forces against the Muslims in Al-Andalus. The poem became best-seller in the early sixteenth century and what Julian Weiss refers to as a nationalistic classic that embodied the political and cultural aspirations of the new imperial age (238). In his political discourse Mena puts forward the ideals of masculinity as defined in terms of physical and moral fortitude. Mena's ultimate goal in writing this text was to support King Juan the second of Castile who was viewed by many as weak monarch. …