Carina ZUBILLAGA

Original title: La voz de las mujeres en el Libro de Apolonio

Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds

Keywords: Female voice, Libro de Apolonio, Middle Ages, Sense of hearing.

The sense of hearing, which together with the sense of sight is associated with cognition in the Middle Ages, will be treated in this work based on the theme of the voice of women in the Libro de Apolonio, one of the representative texts of the Castilian “mester de clerecía”. The characters of Luciana and Tarsiana –wife and daughter of the protagonist Apollonius– sing, tell riddles and recite stories in numerous textual episodes that lets distinguish them as unique heroines with knowledge associated with the clerical culture of the Hispanic early thirteenth century. The study of the expressive and affective power of the female voice in these adventure stories is fundamental to highlight the tensions in the medieval vision about women, their sensitivity and the possibility of a singular voice.