ABSTRACT
In Chapter 4, women are represented as renegades (Christian converts to Islam). The apparently voluntary religious conversion of enslaved Christians to Islam is a thread unifying several seventeenth-century pliegos sueltos. They share various structural elements: the protagonist is captured and enslaved by Ottoman Muslim Turks. The protagonist then receives an offer to marry and convert to Islam. At some point, the protagonist recognizes the error of his or her ways and seeks redemption. The texts all conclude with miraculous occurrences and divine intervention, as it is imperative that the criminal renegade repent and seek redemption. While the Christian perspective of these romances should provoke sympathy with the plight of Christian captives, instead, it vilifies them because of their conversion to Islam. At the end, the renegade is either reintegrated into Christian society or suffers the consequences. Augustín Redondo notes that romantic relationships between Christians and Turks necessarily “conducen al martirio” [“lead to martyrdom”] (240) Because conversion to Islam is represented as a heinous offense, the renegade’s behavior is represented as similarly vile and criminal. The salacious crimes committed by the renegades in these pliegos sueltos, likely designed to increase sales and readership, run the gamut from gambling to murder (both fratricide and patricide), illicit sexual relations, rape, vivisection, robbery, cannibalism, and suicide, while conversion is the most reprehensible of the crimes represented.
