Miles Gloriosa: From Plautus’ Comedy to the Lesbian Crime Novel

Abstract

This article analyses the survival and transformation of Plautus’ miles gloriosus character in contemporary lesbian detective fiction written in Spanish. Drawing on the framework of Classical Reception Studies, it examines how comic elements, character types, and parodic mechanisms characteristic of the Roman comedy have found their way into modern popular genres —particularly noir and hard-boiled detective novel— and have been reconfigured through a feminist and lesbian lens. The article demonstrates that lesbian detectives assume features of the miles (boasting, verbal excess, marginality, the eroticization of power) to subvert them through humour, sisterhood, dialogue, and a redefinition of narrative agency grounded from a feminist viewpoint, thereby displacing the heterosexual narrative typical of the traditional crime novel.