ABSTRACT
In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said explores the relationship, at times normative, at times contestatory, between culture and empire, two concepts that Cervantes and Cervantists know well. As an antidote to the frequent critical failure to acknowledge the imperialism that informs Western novels, Said proposes a "contrapuntal reading," one which takes account of two responses to it, that of accommodation and that of resistance. The history of sexuality, and that of homosexuality within it, is a discipline still in its incipient stage within Hispanism, and acutely so with respect to Golden Age literary studies. With respect to Cervantes criticism, a number of characters in several different works are open to the type of renewed analysis for which studies of sexuality have provided an expanded awareness and additional analytical tools. In a story constructed upon romance and adventure this anomalous, nondesiring male of a contrapuntal and thus void sexuality actually is never a contender in the race to attain Leonisa.
