Citation

González LFL. Hispanofila 2017; 181: 31-48.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017)

DOI

10.1353/hsf.2017.0043

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Fiometa's suicide in Juan de Flores's fifteenth-century romance, Grimalte y Gradisa, underscores the dire consequences of allowing unbridled passions to override reason.1 Fiometa's character, as the etymological meaning of her name suggests, embodies the flames of unrestrained passions that separate her from any form of rational behavior and discourse. Fiometa's impulsive fits of rage trigger an ontological alienation that propels her to lose control of her actions, her reactions, and her perception of that which takes place around her. When Fiometa feels that things do not go her way, her natural response, conditioned by her skewed worldview as observed from her oblique prism of an entitled elite, is to revile those who oppose her willful desire and to attempt to blackmail them by threatening self-harm. Although she often uses anger as a defense mechanism to protect herself from the external world, Fiometa responds to (perceived) adverse events by fending off the disappointment through the conduit of rage. When Pánfilo, her former lover, does not respond to her request to visit her, Fiometa reacts with extreme anger rather than sadness or resignation. Her response is both impulsive and unbecoming. As Pamela Waley points out, Fiometa "is beside herself with fury" ("Introduction" xxxiv). Just a few days later, Pánfilo comes to see her, resolving to abandon her. If his lack of compliance with her request to visit her made her furious, his final rejection drives her to a wrathful suicide.

The cause of Fiometa's death has been a source of debate among scholars of Juan de Flores, as the author himself never explicitly labels her death a suicide or merely a case of amor hereos. The scholarship falls into one of three categories. The first group grosso modo denies Fiometa's suicide, arguing that her death is a natural effect of the intensity of her lovesick passion for the ungrateful Pánfilo (Barbara Matulka 264, marina S. Brownlee 211, Dorothy S. Severin Religious 41, Robert Folger 177). The second group neither confirms nor denies her suicide, adducing the aura of mystery and ambiguity in which Flores enshrouds her death...

Language: en