Seduction narratives as a platform for social change in eighteenth-century Spain

The artifice of amatory seduction, with its complex signs and rituals, involves mastery of the strategy of appearances. It is this space of dissimulation, flirtatiousness, and passions that I examine in relevant expository prose and in late-century Spanish seduction narratives. With the gradual shifts in values that took place in Spain, novels and manuals of conduct refashion seduction in ways that move away from the master seducers—Don Juan, Casanova—toward female seduction. Females engage in a dynamic cycle of seduction that leads men into marriage, but curious patterns emerge when virtuous love or vicious seduction enter the scene.