There’s No Cure for That: Melezina and Mimetic Transference in Fuenteovejuna

At the wedding celebration for Laurencia and Frondoso in Fuenteovejuna, Barrildo and Mengo have a brief exchange (vv. 1491-500) in which the word melezina (enema) appears in three guises: it is a cure (“aunque es cosa saludable”), a prank (“haríalo por reír”) and a form of rough treatment (“llena de tinta y de chinas”). Analysis of the origin and usage of melezina and its sociolinguistic features points to the proposition that it resonated as an archaic and Jewish word which, in turn, suggests that Fuenteovejuna might enact mimetic transference between Jew and peasant, a position I stake out based on existing scholarship on Spain’s “Jewish problem” in relation to the comedia. Taking her cues from Américo Castro’s and others’ provocative comments on the relationship between limpieza de sangre and honor, Melveena McKendrick postulates that a process of mimetic transference was underway that involved caballeros’ honor, women’s purity, and society’s obsession with limpieza de sangre. She characterizes it as a type of psychopathology, according to which one disease masks another; playwrights who could not write about blood purity addressed sexual pureness and male honor instead. More recently, Andrew Herskovits explores the transpositions of honor and limpieza de sangre, and Jew and woman, and the possibility that a positive image of the Jew emerges when plays draw parallels between a converso, on the one hand, and a female victim of the honor code on the other. Empathy explains them both. That is, what concern one elicits, the spectator or reader reassigns to the other (117-25). The notion of transference involving peasant and Jew may be operative in Fuenteovejuna. But in this instance, humor, not empathy, is behind the parallel. An analysis of melezina opens up the concept of mimetic transference to admit the figure of the peasant and the role of humor.