Powerless but armed. Slavery and cognition in Miguel de Cervantes’ El amante liberal

Abstract

In his exemplary novel El amante liberal, Miguel de Cervantes uses the oriental setting to question the conventional representations of matrimony, gender, masculinity and feminity, individualism and freedom. Unlike other contemporary texts, his novel does not establish an opposition between the Muslim and the Christian world, but instead subtly points to the parallels between the two. In the following, our interpretation will lead to a new understanding of the novel’s title as well as of its exemplarity. It will be demonstrated that the official (Christian) discourse of love and matrimony takes on a new meaning when paralleled to its equivalent in the Muslim world.