Feminidad y monstruosidad en el imaginario social: una lectura y dos textos

the concept of de feminine, its consequent valuations and processes o symbolization fill a significant place in the shaping of the structure of the collective social mind at all times and in all societies. the present work tries to visualise two texts wich, though distant in time, converge in the way they present the problem of the feminine in discourse. one the one hand, we analyse two episodes from the libro de buen amor by the arcipreste de hita, a spanish text from the xiv century; and on the other hand, some versions of the "mulánima", collected in san salvador de jujuy in 1997. both texts present the image of the woman by resorting to the figure of a monster. in the first text, a woman from the highlands, half beast, half human, saves a lost gentleman from sure death in exchange from money; in the "mulánima" versions, the adulterous woman, after dying, turns into an awful looking mule as a result of the condemnation of her soul. the question that arises turns around the depply significant issues presented by the figure of the deformed feminine body and a feminity drawn upon and begotten by monstrosity. this question is the guideline that orientates our thinking, and it is our intention to find an answer to it through the present work.