Masturbation, male body and fecundity in a romance of Lorca

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. Lorca introduces an important novelty in his version of the biblical story about Amnon and Tamar: the scene of Amnon's masturbation immediately before he rapes his step-sister. The Granadan poet includes this scene in his romance, thinking of the Israeli prince's fertility and Tamar's pregnancy, according to some of the traditional romances about the half-brothers: he dresses the scene of a certain Dionysian cult, using the yedra as a metaphor for semen, and gives the protagonist a function opposed to that of Onan by prolonging his masturbation in rape in order to be able to impregnate not his sister-in-law but his half-sister.