From Google Books: Women of the Prologue: Imitation, Myth, and Magic in Don Quixote I examines the significance of the sources cited for female characterization in the prologue and their relationship to Cervantes's writing style. When the anonymous friend suggests that Cervantes include Guevara's Lamia, Laida, and Flora; Ovid's Medea; Homer's Calypso; and Virgil's Circe as models for specific types of women, he not only foregrounds the significance of these classical women for the female characters in the text, but also partakes in the controversial debate of the value of imitatio at the historic juncture of Humanist and Modernist perspectives on cultural authority. The book opens with a discussion of literary conventions and imitation strategies of the early modern period and continues with Cervantes's contributions to both. Drawing from Derrida's and Bourdieu's reaction to Austin's speech act theory and from Ostriker's revisionist mythmaking theory, the remaining chapters explore ways in which Cervantes engages (or not) in imitation practices in the text and how elements of these specific classical characters influence the characterization, discourse and thematic qualities ascribed to women in the main part of the text.