El Desdeñado más Firme (eBook)

TABLE OF CONTENTS 7
INTRODUCTION 9
Leonor de Meneses 9
1. Life 9
2. Work 16
Generic Considerations: The Tradition 20
Leonor de Meneses and El desdenado mas firme 33
1. Women Writers of the Spanish Golden Age 33
2. Plot 37
3. Analysis 39
BIBLIOGRAPHY 62
CRITERIA FOR THIS EDITION 72
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS EDITION 73
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 74
El desdenado mas firme 75
Dedicatoria 76
DISCURSO PRIMERO 76
DISCURSO SEGUNDO 121
DISCURSO TERCERO 130
DISCURSO CUARTO 146

Introduction Leonor de Meneses (p. 1)

1. Life

Reliable details concerning the life of Leonor de Meneses remain extremely limited. The information we can ascertain with relative certainty stems from a few sources`—none of which is necessarily reliable—and includes only a few dates and entries. She was born in Lisbon in the 1620`s, the only child and the "filha herdeira" of D. Fernando de Meneses, "Commendador" and "Acaide Mor" of Castello-Branco, and his wife, D. Jeronima de Toledo.

Her first husband was D. Fernando Mascarenhas, the first Conde de Serem and the fifth or sixth son of D. Jorge Mascarenhas, Marques de Montalvao. D. Fernando, as "Mestre de Campo," accompanied his father during his two years (1639-1641) as viceroy of Brazil, where in 1640 they were active in the movement in Bahia in support of Joao TV`s rebellion against Spain. After Portugal successfully claimed Brazil, D. Fernando returned to Portugal, where in 1643 he received the tide of Conde de Serem as a reward for his loyal service to the Portuguese Crown.

It appears that Fernando`s marriage to Leonor took place around the time of his return from Brazil and the granting of his tide. Their union produced one son, Jorge Mascarenhas. The marriage was short-lived: Fernando seems to have succumbed to a fever and died in October, 1649.5 The following year the young Jorge became the second Conde de Serem, but he seems to have died shortly afterward, thus ending the line.

After remaining a widow for a dozen years, D. Leonor married D. Jeronimo de Ataide, the sixth Conde de Atouguia, apparently in 1661, shortly after the death of his first wife (his cousin Maria de Castro). Over the next four years she gave birth to four children:8 D. Luis Peregrine de Ataide, who became the eighth Conde de Atouguia in 1665 and was assassinated on October 6, 1689,9 D. Fernando de Ataide, who died without issue, D. Joao de Ataide, the Conde de Alva, who married D. Constanza Luiza Paim, daughter of Pedro II`s secretary, and D. Joanna Leonor de Toledo e Meneses, who married D. Fernando Mascarenhas, second Marques de Fronteira and Mayordomo Mayor to Queen Mariana of Austria (second wife of Felipe IV).

Leonor de Meneses, Condessa de Serem and Atouguia, died on September 4, 1664, and is interred in the vault of the Condes de Atouguia at the Convent of S. Francisco de Xabregas. Apparently in her late thirties, she died as a result of the difficult childbirth of her only daughter, D. Joanna. The funeral sermon preached by Padre Bertholameu do Quental refers to her death in childbirth "na primavera dos anos", and eulogizes at great length her beauty, her nobility and her youth, using as his text the account of Rachel`s death when giving birth to Benjamin in Genesis 35: "Mortua est [ergo] Rachel."

The entire Meneses family appears to have been highly educated, as we can see by the large number of other writers in the period with that surname.