Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain

by Barbara Fuchs

In the Western imagination, Spain often evokes the colorful culture of al-Andalus, the Iberian region once ruled by Muslims. Tourist brochures inviting visitors to sunny and romantic Andalusia, home of the ingenious gardens and intricate arabesques of Granada's Alhambra Palace, are not the first texts to trade on Spain's relationship to its Moorish past. Despite the fall of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 and the subsequent repression of Islam in Spain, Moorish civilization continued to influence both the reality and the perception of the Christian nation that emerged in place of al-Andalus. In Exotic Nation , Barbara Fuchs explores the paradoxes in the cultural construction of Spain in relation to its Moorish heritage through an analysis of Spanish literature, costume, language, architecture, and chivalric practices. Between 1492 and the expulsion of the Moriscos (Muslims forcibly converted to Christianity) in 1609, Spain attempted to come to terms with its own Moorishness by simultaneously repressing Muslim subjects and appropriating their rich cultural heritage. Fuchs examines the explicit romanticization of the Moors in Spanish literature—often referred to as "literary maurophilia"—and the complex, often silent presence of Moorish forms in Spanish material culture. The extensive hybridization of Iberian culture suggests that the sympathetic depiction of Moors in the literature of the period does not trade in exoticism but instead reminded Spaniards of the place of Moors and their descendants within Spain. Meanwhile, observers from outside Spain recognized its cultural debt to al-Andalus, often deliberately casting Spain as the exotic racial other of Europe.

Genres: History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2008

About the author

Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews

[isaac dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exotic Nation deploys two separate theoretical terms in its reading of early-modern Spain: "maurophilia" and "maurophobia," meaning the love and fetishizing for the Moor and the pathological hatred of the same. These two terms are used to read how various cultural practices, ranging from fashion, architecture, jousting, etc, that are distinctly or otherwise notably "hybrid" in nature--that is, verifiably influenced by Morisco culture, be it Muslim, Christian, or otherwise--are perceived both in the construction of Gothic Spanish identity as well as the Orientalized notion of Spain in the eyes of the French, the Italians, and the Anglos.

In Edward Said's Orientalism, the absence of Spain and Spanish-language materials is notable, and even admitted by the esteemed professor himself. In many ways, Fuchs's book is contributing to answering that lacuna--how exactly does the history of Spain relate to Orientalism as a cultural phenomenon?

Certain ethnographic details are expounded in fascinating ways, from the way folks would eat on the floor to the certain fad among monied Catholic women of veiling in the "Africa (i.e. Muslim) way in the early 17th c. Fuchs ends her book on a provocative note--arguing that US attitudes towards Hispanic studies carries the residue of early-Modern prejudices against Spain due to its indelibly African, and thereby Jewish and Muslim, influences. Some of these arguments are dated (predictably), but provocative and nonetheless helpful.

Delightfully artful in its prosody for an academic work, and a wondrous breadth of source material provided for the curious.