In The Three Essays on Sexuality Freud states: «Historians of civilization appear to be at one in assuming that powerful components are acquired for every silver [p. 30] kind of cultural achievement by this diversion of sexual instinctual forces from sexual aims and their direction to new ones -we would add, accordingly, that the same process plays a part in the development of the individual and we would place its beginning in the period of sexual latency of childhood». (94) (N. from the A.)

Laplanche and Pontalis explain this intermediate process in Freud's concept of «sublimated energy» as follows: «The transformation of a sexual activity into a sublimated one (assuming both are directed towards external, independent objects) is now said to require an intermediate period during which the libido is withdrawn on to the ego so that desexualization may become possible. It is in this sense Freud speaks in The Ego and the Id (1923) of the ego's energy as a 'desexualized and sublimated' one capable of being displaced on to non-sexual activities» (433). Non-sexual activities are artistic or intellectual ones (as literature) that are valuable to the individual and society as a whole. (N. from the A.)

There is another aspect to this process which relates to the simultaneous vilification of the idealized object. Most courtly lovers, as many pastoral ones, portray their objects of admiration as cruel, inconstant, and even evil. This paradoxical operation is viewed by Slavoj Žižek as a marker for what is un-representable in Woman, the Lacanian Thing. See his chapter «Courtly love, or, Woman as Thing» in The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso. 1994). (N. from the A.)

For a discussion on the influence of poesía cancioneril on the Spanish pastoral, refer to Francisco López Estrada, Los libros de pastores en la literatura española (Madrid: Gredos. 1974). (N. from the A.)

Poggioli sees this characteristic as a recourse that wards off the physical, psychological, and economic jeopardy that realities such as child-rearing would impose on this idyllic and leisure based space. See his chapter «Pastoral Love» in The Oaten Flute. (N. from the A.)

The neo-Platonic emphasis on spiritual union as an intentional de-sexualization of the relationship between the lovers is evident in the pastoral mode. And in turn it fits nicely under the structure of sublimation as the re-direction of libidinal energy towards a non-sexual object -the female object that has been de-sexualized and left in the vacuousness of the spirit. (N. from the A.)

In the speech Don Quixote presents the lack of material interest or competition («los que en ella vivían ignoraban estas dos palabras de tuyo y mío» [155]) and the giving nature of Nature («a nadie le era necesario para alcanzar su ordinario sustento tomar otro trabajo que alzar la mano y alcanzarle de las robustas encinas» [155]) as markers of his imagined Arcadia. These elements are traditionally present in the pastoral locus, Los siete libros de la Diana being a model of this economic conception in Spanish pastoral literature. (N. from the A.)

That it is Don Quixote, a male subject, who envisions the Golden Age as a feminine space is potentially paradoxical. It is in moments like this that one could say Don Quixote's feminine side surfaces. This psycho-sexual ambiguity in the character is postulated by Anne J. Cruz as Don Quixote's vacillations between the Imaginary and the Symbolic orders: «Oscillating by degrees between the Imaginary and the Symbolic in parts I and II, Don Quixote never fully separates from, or integrates with, the chivalric narratives» (96). These chivalric narratives are, as I have proposed for the pastoral, male centered. (N. from the A.)

That there is any possibility for «perdición» within Don Quixote's imagined Golden Age poses yet another paradox within the speech. As Barbara Mujica has indicated: «What is evident in Witness and in Renaissance pastoral as well, is the inevitable collapse of the utopian vision. Unfailingly, outside forces or internal passions interfere and destroy the image of harmony. In no pastoral romance is the projection of perfection actually achieved and maintained. Arcadia is an illusion». (6)

With this paradox lying at the core of every pastoral (there cannot be Arcadia without its opposite, be it the polis or personal desire), I maintain that Don Quixote's speech is still a liberating one for the female subject. Since a kernel of instability or perversion is always at the heart of the locus amoenus, the female's capacity to deal with it as a coherent unified subject -rather than an erased and scattered object / mirror- is most significant for a reading of the Golden Age speech as a subversion of the traditional pastoral genre. (N. from the A.)

Cervantes' Gelasia in La Galatea as an extreme case of mujer esquiva is another example. Although she, like Cervantes's own Galatea, is an early prototype for Marcela, her extreme behavior is much more easily appropriated by the male pastoral community. She stands for the cruel nature which is also traditionally attached to female representations in the pastoral world view. (N. from the A.)