Cross-Cultural Movement in the Name of Honour: Renegades, Honour, and State in Miguel de Cervantes' Barbary Play

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cross-Cultural Movement in the Name of Honour

T2 - Renegades, Honour, and State in Miguel de Cervantes' Barbary Play

AU - Fastrup, Anne

PY - 2012/5/1

Y1 - 2012/5/1

N2 - Miguel de Cervantes work displays a broad range of people who transgress the limits defined by gender, ethnicity, nation and religious denomination. In recent Cervantes scholarship, this motley crowd of cross-cultural identities has been seen as examples of Cervantes opposition to the racially based identity politics of State and Church in Counter-Reformation Spain. However, Cervantes Barbary and Turkish captivity plays suggest that cross-cultural identities may also, and quite to the contrary, be viewed in relation to the limited reach of the State's power and its limited capacity to define, shape and control its subjects. This becomes particularly clear in El gallardoespaol where the soldier Fernando de Saavedra,in an act of disobedience to the king, crosses the border between the Christian and the Muslim world to become a renegade in order to defend his anachronistic and self-assertive idea of honour. If we are to understand the connection between honour and cross-cultural identity in El gallardoespaol, we should not look at the identity politics of State and Church, but at the way in which the play is concerned with the Spanish maurophilia.

AB - Miguel de Cervantes work displays a broad range of people who transgress the limits defined by gender, ethnicity, nation and religious denomination. In recent Cervantes scholarship, this motley crowd of cross-cultural identities has been seen as examples of Cervantes opposition to the racially based identity politics of State and Church in Counter-Reformation Spain. However, Cervantes Barbary and Turkish captivity plays suggest that cross-cultural identities may also, and quite to the contrary, be viewed in relation to the limited reach of the State's power and its limited capacity to define, shape and control its subjects. This becomes particularly clear in El gallardoespaol where the soldier Fernando de Saavedra,in an act of disobedience to the king, crosses the border between the Christian and the Muslim world to become a renegade in order to defend his anachronistic and self-assertive idea of honour. If we are to understand the connection between honour and cross-cultural identity in El gallardoespaol, we should not look at the identity politics of State and Church, but at the way in which the play is concerned with the Spanish maurophilia.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Miguel de Cervantes

KW - Miguel de Cervantes

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1475-3820

VL - 89

SP - 347

EP - 367

JO - Bulletin of Spanish Studies

JF - Bulletin of Spanish Studies

IS - 3

ER -