Memories of Colonisation in Medieval and Modern Castile: Rereading and Refashioning al-Andalus
Rebecca De Souza, "Memories of Colonisation in Medieval and Modern Castile: Rereading and Refashioning al-Andalus "
English | ISBN: 0198918097 | 2025 | 288 pages | PDF | 5 MB
English | ISBN: 0198918097 | 2025 | 288 pages | PDF | 5 MB
Memories of Colonisation in Medieval and Modern Castile: Rereading and Refashioning al-Andalus traces the evolving memory of a dominant al-Andalus in medieval Castilian and, later, modern Spanish literature, and its overlap with contemporary formations of collective identity, race, and nation. It presents a series of close readings of neomedievalist literary works that look back to the socioeconomic apogee of al-Andalus, the tenth-century Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. These works rewrite what has become known as the story of the siete infantes de Lara, although it is their Andalusi half-brother, Mudarra, who takes centre stage from the early modern period on.
In its earliest form, it is a story of a weak, conflictual county of Castile, dependent socioeconomically and morally upon Andalusi intervention. This book therefore traces how a story of Castilian weakness is repeatedly rewritten once the reverse colonial dynamic had taken hold and Castile had begun conquering al-Andalus.
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