The Figure of Ganymede in Early Modern Spanish Comedias

Abducted by Jupiter for his beauty and made cupbearer to the gods, Ganymede has long been interpreted as an emblem of pederasty and queer desire. While critics such as James M. Saslow and Leonard Barkan have emphasized the (homo)erotic readings of this mythological figure, they have largely overlooked the Iberian Peninsula. This book offers the first sustained study of Ganymede in seventeenth-century Spain, a context marked by political decline and an extraordinary flowering of literary production.

Focusing on comedias, this book identifies sixteen overt references to Ganymede across works from Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Ana Caro, Andrés de Claramonte, and others, ranging from La escolástica celosa (1596–1602) to Fray Manuel de Guerra’s Aprobación (1682). By analyzing canonical and noncanonical plays alike, it demonstrates how Spanish playwrights reimagined Ganymede as a political, moral, and erotic figure whose meanings were fluid and contested. Drawing also on non-theatrical sources such as Juan Peréz de Moya, the study shows how Ganymede became a tool for guiding, criticizing, and educating audiences, complicating the assumption that he functioned only as a symbol of forbidden desire.

The Figure of Ganymede in Early Modern Spanish Comedias will be of interest to scholars and students of Early Modern literature, theater, and mythology, as well as those engaged with queer theory, reception studies, and cultural history. Its distinctive contribution lies in recovering the neglected Iberian dimension of Ganymede’s reception and in demonstrating that his ambiguities open new ways of reading the political, moral, and sexual cultures of Early Modern Spain.