Sex and the Border

Abstract

This article discusses the relation between Byzantine bride-snatching ballads and Spanish Frontier Ballads. The article looks at social conflicts between different borderland societies and how the genre of bride-snatching ballads allowed characters to challenge social conventions and reconfigure new value systems. Ultimately, the article suggests that Byzantine sexual imagery contained in Byzantine material provides important clues for understanding the development of Muslim–Christian relations along the Spanish Christian–Muslim frontier.

Women Watering Basil Plants: New Insights into a Spanish Moroccan Folktale

“…In a previous essay on the Romance de don Bueso, I argued how the figure of the mother embodies the principle of legality in the absence of the father (Duque, 2011). Just as the father represents a coercive force intended to prohibit his daughter's wedding with a stranger, his removal at the beginning of the princesita story creates an initial imbalance that could be rectified by the introduction of a new male.…”