Papers by Benjamin Easton
Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain. Edited by Carlos Varón, Cristina Pérez, et al., 2021
This chapter discusses the power dynamics and interrogation strategies involved in the relationsh... more This chapter discusses the power dynamics and interrogation strategies involved in the relationship between the pícaro and his implied inquisitor in the context of the Inquisition protocol in the sixteenth-century Spanish Empire. Taken on its own, the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes provides a meaningful, yet incomplete, vision of the construction of the pícaro as a representative early modern subject under imperial ideology. Through a comparative analysis of the fictional spaces featured in several picaresque novels to Nicholas Eymerich's Manual de inquisidores, a more fruitful analysis can be conducted with respect to how the inquisitor's "gaze" produces a subject and, in turn, how the pícaro employs various strategies to shape, manipulate, and even resist it. In fact, the resistance shown through the pícaro's mañas and tretas eventually creates a series of blind spots and moments of indeterminacy which not only disrupt, but also inform the inquisitor's gaze. Thus, the comparative analysis works to reveal a heretofore-unacknowledged implication of both the inquisitor and the pícaro as active agents in the determination of the other's discourse. This interplay becomes, then, less a formulaic interrogation and confession and more a revelation of the constant negotiation wherein both parties fashion and are fashioned by the other. Ultimately, this reciprocity sheds light on the way in which even minor figures who are ostensibly "outside of the law" can be meaningful contenders in the way said law is shaped and developed.
INTI Revista de Literatura Hispánica y Transatlántica , 2021
Injértese en nuestras repúblicas el mundo; pero el tronco ha de ser el de nuestras repúblicas.
Conference Presentations by Benjamin Easton
52nd Northeast Modern Languages Convention, 2021
Seeking Voices / Seeking Silences Conference, 2020
Organization: Boston University Romance Studies Department
Spaces of Law: IV Conference in Transatlantic Studies , 2019
Location: Harvard University
Organization: The Real Colegio Complutense
Book Reviews by Benjamin Easton
Bulletin of the Comediantes, 2022
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Papers by Benjamin Easton
Conference Presentations by Benjamin Easton
Book Reviews by Benjamin Easton