Description
Book SynopsisFinally, Grieve focuses on the misogynistic elements of the story and asks why the fall of Spain is figured as a cautionary tale about a woman's sexuality.
Trade ReviewAn impressive, erudite, and multidisciplinary approach... Grieve is to be commended for showing that such discourses transcend Iberian literature. Highly recommended. Choice 2010 Ambitious, deeply researched study... The Eve of Spain makes a significant contribution to Hispanic studies... Likewise, the study presents a useful model for trans-historical literary scholarship, a feat for which Grieve should be applauded. -- Rachel L. Burk Caliope 2009 Grieve makes it clear why history matters, noting that while medieval and early modern societies do not mirror today's complex world, they 'nonetheless are seedlings of, and bear some relationship to, today's globalized world and geopolitical issues'. -- Rebecca Moore Journal of Church History 2010 In searching for the medieval origins of Spanish nationalism, Grieve's provocative book promises to intervene in some of the thorniest debates in modern Spanish historiography, at the same time as it engages the larger scholarly public interested in the premodern contribution to nation building and nationalism. -- Adam G. Beaver Journal of Modern History The Eve of Spain is an erudite, engaging, and original excursion into the literary psyche of medieval and early-modern Spain. -- Brian Catlos Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 2010
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Act One: Fall and Redemption (711-1492)
1. Setting the Stage
Of Women, Kings, and Nation
Origins of a National Myth
2. Granada Is the Bride
Using History to Shape a National Past
La Cava and the King . . . and Pelayo and His Sister
"She Came to Him in His Prison Cell"
The Jewess of Toledo and Rising Anti-Semitism
3. Blood Will Out
The Return of the Goths
Corral Casts Spain's Founding Myth
Training Isabel, the Princess of Asturias
Isabel, the Warrior Queen
Bad Women and Good in the Late Fifteenth Century
The Inquisition and the Holy Child of La Guardia
The Fallen and the Promise
Act Two: Promise and Fulfillment (1492-1700)
Interlude
4. Desiring the Nation
The Influence of Pedro de Corral's Chronicle of King Rodrigo in the Sixteenth Century
The Woman's Body and the Fate of the Nation
The Loss of Spain in the Oral Ballad Tradition
Philip II's Chronicler, Ambrosio de Morales, and the Development of the Heroic Pelayo
Philip II and the Power of Prophecy
5. Here Was Troy, Farewell Spain!
A Tale of Tales
Miguel de Luna and Spain's Prophetic History
Father Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Nationalism
Spain's Second Helen
Lope de Vega and the Stage of King and Nation
The Legend of the Fall of Spain after the Expulsion
Either Rise or Fall
Act Three: Imagining Spain (The Enlightenment to the Present)
6. Ancestral Ghosts and New Beginnings
The Challenge of Foundational Myths in the Age of Enlightenment
Fallen Women Take the Stage
Orientalism, Romanticism, and Visigothic Spain
The Search for Spanish National Identity in Medieval Spain
Pelayo, the Role of Women, and Contemporary Spain
The Founding Myth and the New Millennium
Epilogue: Cultural Dialogues
Notes
Bibliography
Index
