CONSTRUCTING GENEALOGIES IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND AND THE

MEDITERRANEAN

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

AND THE COMMITTEE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Anne Marie Guglielmo

May 2010

© 2010 by Anne Marie Guglielmo. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/kg857mb9088

ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Roland Greene, Primary Adviser

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Vincent Barletta

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Johannes Gumbrecht

I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Patricia Parker

Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education

This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives.

iii iv

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to my adviser Roland Greene for thinking like no one else does, for asking the most provocative questions, and for pushing my writing and research beyond where even I thought it was going. His insight has guided my project since my first class with him—Edmund Spenser—as I began my graduate studies. I thank

Patricia Parker for the invaluable independent studies I took with her after her inspiring class on Islam and Shakespeare. Her encyclopedic knowledge on

Shakespeare and the epic genre has enriched my research. Although he came to

Stanford late in my career as a graduate student, Vincent Barletta’s expertise on medieval and early modern Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and his balanced approach to analyzing the religion and politics of that period have helped me immensely.

Finally, I thank Sepp Gumbrecht for his brilliance in everything.

Without my family, I can truly say that this dissertation would never have been written. Thank you to my beautiful children for bringing me joy. To my mother and father and to Florence and Mike LaFemina thank you for thousands of hours of childcare so that I could work on my dissertation and still be a mother. I could not have completed my PhD without your help. I also want to thank my parents for their wisdom and perspective throughout my time at Stanford. To my three sisters, I cannot overestimate how much their support, friendship, and love has meant to me, particularly these last few years. Finally, thank you to my husband who, especially when my confidence waned, always believed in my ability to succeed.

v

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Ch 1. Describing and Constructing Europe’s Africa 20

Ch 2. Romance and Empire: Reclaiming Genealogies in Orlando furioso and The

Faerie Queene 87

Ch 3. Fluellen’s Parallel Lives: Constructing East-West English Kings in

Shakespeare’s Henriad 144

Ch 4. Don Quijote: Reconstructing Genealogies in La Mancha 211

1

Introduction: “Ahijándolos al Preste Juan” ‘Making sons/texts for Prester John’

In many ways, the myth of Prester John permeates this dissertation, encapsulating various types of genealogical construction in early modern literature of

England and the Mediterranean. He is mentioned in Leo Africanus’ Descrizione dell’Africa as a king of tantamount importance to an “emperor” ‘imperadore’ and in the second volume of Navigazioni e viaggi, Ramusio places an edited translation of

Verdadera Informaçam das terras do Preste Joam das Indias, Francisco Alvarez’s account of his travels to Ethiopia.1 Mármol Carvajal mentions him and his various

Abyssinian, Chaldean, and Tartarian names.2 He appears in Orlando furioso, blind and starved by harpies as punishment for his audacity against God. After Astolfo drives the harpies away, he provides the English knight with soldiers in order to conquer

Charlemagne’s pagan and Muslim enemies. He crops up even in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Benedict tells Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing that in order to avoid

Beatrice he would “bring [ …] the length of/ Prester John's foot […] rather than hold three words' conference with this/ harpy” (2.1.239-240), suggesting the distance of his mythic realm and even the ridiculousness of his sheer existence. Prester John is mentioned in the first volume of Don Quijote as well. In the canon’s speech on the ridiculous nature of chivalric romance and fiction in general, he states “What mind, that is not barbarous or coarse, would believe a huge tower of knights fell into the sea, like a ship with strong seas, and tonight went to Lombardy, and tomorrow rose in the lands of Prester John of the Indies, or anywhere else that neither Ptolemy discovered,

1 Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navigazioni e viaggi, ed. Marica Milanesi, 6 Vol (Turin: Einaudi, 1978) vol 1, 21 and vol 2, 75-385. 2 Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Descripción general de Africa (1573-1599), Facsim. ed. (Madrid: el Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1953) Fol 20r, 198v.

2 nor Marco Polo saw?” ‘¿Qué ingenio, si no es del todo bárbaro e inculto, podrá contentarse leyendo que una gran torre llena de caballeros va por la mar adelante, como nave con próspero viento, y hoy anochece en Lombardía, y mañana amanezca en tierras del Preste Juan de las Indias, o en otras que ni las descubrió Tolomeo ni las vio Marco Polo?’ (DQ1, 565).3 Also in the prologue, the author’s friend advises him not to worry about having the authority of prefatory sonnets and epigrams by famous poets. Rather, he suggests that the narrator write them himself and “baptize and name them whatever you’d like, making them into sons of Prester John of the Indies or the

Emperor of Trebizond, both of whom, I’ve heard were famous poets” ‘los podéis bautizar y poner el nombre que quisiéredes, ahijándolos al Preste Juan de las Indias o al Emperador de Trapisonda, de quien yo sé que hay noticia que fueron famosos poetas” (DQ1, 54).

The pronoun “los” ‘them’ in “ahijándolos al Preste Juan,” refers of course to the mock poems that the narrator’s friend suggests he invent. However, “ahijando” signifies more than merely “attributing” or “imputing” them to Prester John. Indeed, it introduces genealogy, creating illegitimate or unauthorized “sons” for the imagined author-father Prester John. Prester John, as he is named in English, is an amalgamation of many mythical and historically based figures across a broad span of time and geography.4 In the earlier Middle Ages he was supposedly located somewhere in Asia

3 Miguel de Cervantes, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, vol 1, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1978). 4 For more on the history and texts associated with Prester John see L. N. Gumilev’s Searches for an Imaginary Kingdom: the Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John, trans. R. E. F. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) and Vsevolod Slessarev’s published dissertation Prester John: The Letter and the Legend, Diss. University of Wisconsin, 1960, Facsim Ed. (Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 1988 and for a select bibliography of works on Prester

3

(China, Mongolia, India), but by the 1500s his elusive kingdom migrated west to

Africa (Ethiopia/Abyssinia).5 Despite many geographers’ and explorers’ persistence, a pontiff-emperor figure by the name of Prete Gianni/Prester John was not located. The most concrete evidence of such a figure’s existence came in the form of a letter delivered to the pope by the priest Francisco Alvarez in 1533 (in Ramusio), supposedly pledging the obeisance of “Atani Tingil” to the pope.6 The papacy and its supporters believed that they had a Christian ally in African lands primarily inhabited by Muslim people. Indeed, finding Prester John was a major agenda for Portugal’s

Prince Henrique “the Navigator.”7

As one can see in Cervantes’ and Shakespeare’s treatment of Prester John, by the seventeenth-century, mounting evidence suggesting that such an omnipotent, emperor-pope did not exist changed his literary function from tantalizing to farcical.

Why then, his persistence in European literature for so many centuries? Aside from his notoriously elusive location, one of the only constants of the Prester John myth was

John see Prester John: the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes ed. Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (Aldershot, Great Britain: Variorum, 1996) 291-304. 5 See C.F. Beckingham “An Ethiopian Embassy to Europe, c. 1310,” “Prester John in West Africa,” and “The Quest for Prester John” in Prester John: the Mongols and the Ten Lost Tribes ed. Charles F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton, 197-207, 207-212, 271-290. Note also that, as Peter Russell explains, references to “the Indies” and “Indians,” as in my examples from Cervantes and Mármol above are based on the various meanings that “India” had at this time, “as well as a failure to take into account the configuration of the western coast of Africa as […] imaginatively described in the Libro del Conosçimiento and depicted by some fifteenth-century map makers […] the ‘India’ that Henrician [Prince Henrique] documents have in mind is in fact north-east Africa,” Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) 121. 6 Slessarev discusses mainly the French translation of the letter, but directs the reader to the (primarily Russian) scholarship on the various Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, Serbian, , and German versions, The Letter and the Legend, 5. See also David Quint, Epic and Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 234-240. 7 Peter Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator,’ 121-127.

4 his Christianity.8 That is, wherever he was located—in the works in my dissertation, primarily in modern-day Ethiopia—he represented the European fantasy of a Christian oasis amongst non-Christian and non-European peoples. Even as late as 1600, in the introduction to the English translation of Leo Africanus’ Descrizione, John Pory emphasizes that one of the most important pieces of information contained in the book regards “Prete Ianni” “Presbyter Iohn” “Pretious Iohn.”9 What did Prester John signify to early modern European readers?

Prester John’s name does not merely evoke the mythos behind the person, but also ideologies of “empire.” In all of the works I analyze in this dissertation, the most lucid example of this occurs in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. Prior to flying to the moon to gather Orlando’s wits, Astolfo witnesses the bizarre ritual starvation of the now- blind Christian King Senapo of Ethiopia (Prester John), who apparently resides at the base of Earthly Paradise, described as the richest and most beautiful kingdom in the world. With a history strikingly similar to that of King Nimrod or Lucifer, he challenges God’s power. Aside from Ariosto’s own explanation that the harpies defiling his food are like foreigners in Italy, critics lack proper interpretations for why

Senapo is punished through both blindness and also starvation by the harpies defiling his food. Aside from youthful hubris, Senapo’s impetus for challenging God is not well explained.

8 Prester John’s connection with Christianity is evident in his many associations with St. Thomas’ evangelism in India. See C.F. Beckingham, “The Achievements of Prester John” in Prester John, the Mongols, and the Ten Lost Tribes, 6-7, 19 and Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John: The Letter and the Legend, 9-31. 9 Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained, trans John Pory, ed Robert Brown (London, 1896).

5

One explanation for his punishment is that Ethiopian Christians were considered a heretical sect, similar to the Byzantine church in pre-1453

Constantinople. As Leo Africanus illuminates as well, such practices as annual baptisms, fire baptisms, and circumcision, to name a few, branded them as illegitimately unorthodox.10 As represented in the various bogus and translated letters

(and in Ariosto), Prester John and his kingdom were similar enough to European

Christians to be incorporated (to conquer Muslim Turks and the Egyptian Mamluks) and yet different enough that they would be subordinate to the Roman papacy. Even after his kingdom had migrated to a mythical locus amoenus in Eastern Africa, it remained a fringe geography—neither Asia, nor Africa. Indeed, in locating “Prete

Ianni” for his Italian readers, Africanus notes that Arab cosmographers do not consider his territories to be within Africa.11 Prester John epitomizes the construction of both real and mythical Renaissance genealogies in a way that always comes back to monochrome categories of East and West, Christian and Islam. Most importantly, the figure of Prester John exemplifies one of my main points that present day notions of a monolithic, powerful Christian West and an antagonistic Eastern Islam had their own genealogies, so to speak, much earlier than nineteenth-century colonialism. That is, in

10 See David Quint, Epic and Empire, 236-237. 11 Africanus warns that the ‘terra de’ negri’ where the Nile passes, that is the Western part, “that is, the part beyond the strait of Arabia Felix, this part is not held to be part of Africa for many reasons, which are enumerated in long works, and the Latin peoples call it Ethiopia. Certain religious orders come from there who have their faces marked by fire, and one can see them in Europe, particularly in Rome. This part is ruled in the manner of an emperor by a man called Prester John. And almost all of that region is inhabited by Christians” ‘cioé quella parte che è fuori dello stretto dell’Arabia Felice, questa parte non esser reputata parte d’Africa per molte ragioni, che in lunge opere si contengono, e i Latini la chiaman Etiopia. Da lei vengono certi religiosi frati, i quali hanno i lor visi segnati col fuoco, e si veggono per tutta l’Europa e specialmente in Roma. Questa parte è signoreggiata da un capo a modo di imperadore, a cui gli Italiani dicono Prete Gianni. E la maggior parte di cotal regione è abitata da cristiani.’ (Ramusio I, 21).

6 a small way this dissertation seeks to engage with contemporary politics and Islamic and Christian relations, with the minor and modest goal of demonstrating that categorical and oppositional understanding of Muslim enemies—despite incontrovertible historical evidence of economic trade, cooperation, and indeed even emulation—had its roots much earlier than even the period that I treat.

While this dissertation is not based upon a single methodology or literary practice, it certainly responds to many of the provocations of Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism. While I utilize some of his more specific discussions, such as that of colonial collaboration in the body of my chapters, his urging for what he calls

“contrapuntal analysis” inspired my readings of various European and African,

Muslim and Christian authors and their works through a genealogical lens.12 The practice of contrapuntal analysis—drawing out marginalized and silenced voices— within Renaissance literature is quite different from that of British imperial colonialism that he discusses from several centuries later. Most notably, the dominant

Christian imperial West (against which one would engage in a contrapuntal analysis with texts from “marginalized voices”) does not exist in an equivalent manner in the fifteenth- and seventeenth-centuries.

Various critics have responded to the caveats of Said’s formulations in early modern literature.13 Gerald MacLean notes many postcolonial studies after Said’s

12 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) 18, 32, 43, 51, 66-67. 13 For some recent examples with an overview of Said’s influence on early modern English literature, see Matthew Birchwood’s Staging Islam in England: Drama and Culture 1640- 1685, Studies in Renaissance Literature, Vol. 21 (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer Limited, 2007) 1-20 and Benedict S. Robinson Islam and Early Modern English Literature: The Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 11-16.

7

Orientalism that quarreled with his way of imagining East-West relations.14 The pre- colonial period receives scanty attention while the Ottoman Empire is outright ignored. However, as Said himself notes, this was the initial impetus behind writing

Cultural and Imperialism, a kind of sequel to Orientalism.15 Re-Orienting the

Renaissance, for example, is a collection of essays in which authors look beyond

Europe and demonstrate how the “Renaissance” would have been entirely different, if not impossible, had it not been for direct and regular contact with the eastern, largely

Muslim world, and the constant exchange of goods and ideas. Lisa Jardine and Jerry

Brotton’s Global Exchange too illustrates this point, but in a way that further dismantles extra-geographic understandings of “East” and “West” to demonstrate that geographical and ideological borders between Islam and Christianity were indeed porous in the exchange of art and ideas.16 Another example is Nabil Matar’s English translation of Arabic travel writing from the seventeenth century, which clearly demonstrates the movement of Arabic people and ideas across Europe and even the

Americas.17

Despite the caveats of Said’s theories, they remains quite influential to my discussion of genealogies. To Said’s credit, he cautions that Cultural and Imperialism, in fact, will not deal with or apply to all imperial settings.18 For my dissertation, the

14 See Gerald MacLean’s introduction to Re-Orienting the Renaissance, ed. Gerald MacLean (London: Palgrave, 2005) 7. 15 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). 16 Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East & West (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000). 17 Nabil Matar, ed & trans, In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2003). 18 “Moreover, there are several empires that I do not discuss: the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian, the Ottoman, and the Spanish and Portuguese […] These omissions, however, are not

8 thorniest issues of contrapuntal analysis involve teasing out the dominant and marginalized voices. Specifically, one would have to ask which power is imperially dominant, Christian, and even “West.” The group nearest to definition as an “empire” would have been the Ottoman Turks, not the English or Spanish. Although parallels of

Said’s Christian European “West” with a non-Christian “East” (typically Muslim in the works I analyze) are complicated in the Renaissance, the fantasy of Western

European imperial superiority nonetheless persists as wishful thinking—an ever- present aspect of genealogical construction in all my chapters. Indeed, as I demonstrate, the weaker power is often a Christian “West” because the “West” or

“Europe” as it would later be called, was mired in disunity of nation, religion, and

“empire.” In Ariosto’s brief gloss on Prester John’s punishment of starvation and blindness he blames ravenous, baneful harpies for invading Italy too. The geographical inheritor of the Roman Empire, Italy had been invaded by France and Spain countless times in Ariosto’s own lifetime while Italian ducal families fought amongst themselves. A major point of my dissertation is to demonstrate that perhaps the only common thread holding “Europe” or the “West” together was each nation’s imagining itself as the heir to the Caesars’ Roman Empire, not Christianity per se.

Initially this dissertation was conceived as a project arranged thematically around Renaissance genealogies: consanguineal, heroic, and literary genealogies.

Simply put, consanguineal genealogies consider true blood relationships, whether of

at all meant to suggest that Russia’s domination of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, Istanbul’s rule over the Arab world, Portugal’s over what are today’s Angola and Mozambique, and Spain’s domination in both the Pacific and Latin America have been either benign (and hence approved of) or any less imperialist,” Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, xxii.

9 fictional characters or historical figures; heroic genealogies trace a imagined lineage to anterior heroes (real or mythical); and finally, literary genealogies document a paternal genealogy such that both authors and their texts participate in emulation and reproduction of prior works. As I developed the chapters, however, it became clear that in several of the literary works I analyzed, more than one of the genealogical paradigms I identified worked in balance with others. For example, any account of consanguineal genealogical construction in Renaissance epic must observe that as an author describes the origins of a patron’s genealogy, for example, those roots are most often mythical—and thus also malleable—in nature. As such, my readings of blood genealogies in this dissertation often analyze the extent to which heroic genealogies both repel and support the former construction. As I have indicated above, in many ways, my readings of genealogies are indebted to studies of empire, particularly David

Quint’s magisterial Epic and Empire. His manner of depicting the wistful nature of empire and its ties to religion greatly influenced my discussion of heroic genealogies.

Chapter one begins not in the East or the West, but geographically speaking, to the south. Hassan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi (or al-Gharnati), known by scholars today as Joanne Lione Africanus or “Leo Africanus,” typifies most of the genealogies presented in the dissertation. As one might observe by his many names, he is alternately defined in English, Latin, and Italian as “the African” and in

Arabic as either “the Granadan” ‘al-Gharnati’ or “the man from Fez” ‘al-Fasi.’ That is, even in name Africanus represents the multivalence of identity surrounding the

Mediterranean Sea. Africanus was born in the Muslim Kingdom of Granada around

1485 and immigrated with his family to Fez around time of the Christian Conquest of

10

Granada in 1492. He trained to become a faqih, or a scholar trained in Islamic law, and in 1517, on a diplomatic mission as an ambassador, he was captured by Spanish pirates off of the coast of Tunis. He was presented to Pope Leo X (in whose honor he was baptized with the name of “Giovanni Leone”) and spent at least one year in the prison of Castel San Angelo. It is unknown whether he ever returned to North Africa, but his Libro de la Cosmogrophia [sic] et Geographia de Affrica was written in Italian around 1526. Between 1550 and 1563, Giovanni Battista Ramusio presented an edited version that was published in his Navigazione e viaggi as Della descrizione dell’Africa e delle cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Africano.

Both Africanus and his respective work epitomize the intersection of various genealogies in a way that both reifies Muslim and Christian geographical designations

(such as a purely Christian European “West” and a largely Muslim “East”) while simultaneously challenging those categories. In the first part of the chapter, I discuss the ways in which Africanus’ treatment of actual consanguineal genealogies, such as

Noah’s progeny and the Shi’a and Sunni Islamic schism, in turn says something about the nature of Africanus’ literary genealogies as an author. Specifically, I view the

Cosmogrophia as participating in an isnad, or a Muslim literary chain of transmission, that is both authorizing as it looks to past authors for verification and prospective in its preservation of information for posterity. However, writing in the circumstances that he did, at the crossroads of various patria and religions, his work is also the product of imitatio, a very different version of literary genealogy. Whereas isnad functions to preserve the truth and essence of a work through time, imitatio is rather focused upon imitation and “overgoing” predecessor texts such that, despite echoing the original

11 work, it changes it substantially. What I describe as Africanus’ “European isnad” is the result of these competing traditions in his Cosmogrophia that enable Africanus to recount the “truth”—as he puts it—about Africa and Africans for his Italian audience.

I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the afterlife of Africanus’ work and its continuation through a European isnad at the hands of Luis del Mármol Carvajal. I argue that Mármol unwittingly adapts Africanus’ hybrid literary genealogy to purposes that likely would have appalled Africanus. Unlike the Latin, French, and

English translations (and even Ramusio’s edited Italian version) of the Cosmogrophia,

Mármol copies whole passages from Africanus with virtually no recognition of his source. Rather, Mármol sidesteps Africanus by citing his own Arab and African sources, additionally citing other Greek and Latin authors in a way that virtually writes

Africanus out of his own history. In addition, quite different from Africanus who does not note who, if anyone, sponsored his work, Mármol writes for the patronage of the

Spanish court, specifically touting his work as a tool to assist King Philip in his wars against Islam at large. The resulting effect is a Descripción general de Africa that ironically undercuts Africanus’ more balanced and nuanced story of “Africa” and that results in a polarization of the very categories that Africanus strove to dismantle.

In the second chapter, I compare Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Both authors follow a Virgilian precedent in which Anchises reveals to his son Aeneas his future progeny, including the glorious

“future” emperor Caesar Augustus, Virgil’s patron. This moment, which I term the

“genealogical pageant,” functions as the poet’s prophetic moment, in which he effectively “predicts” history while depicting a parade of his patron’s ancestors that is

12 both retrospective and prospective. In the case of Orlando furioso, Ariosto stages multiple genealogical pageants that drive the plot of the wandering poem, urging

Bradamante and Ruggiero to pursue each other for the sake of their heirs, the Ferrarese ducal d’Este family. However, the primary stumbling block to the lovers’ union is not merely finding one another, but Ruggiero’s Muslim background from his African mother. It is likely that Ariosto’s construction of Estensi genealogies as having an

Islamic “stain” would have alarmed his patrons. Why make Ruggiero Muslim at all, if he is to be converted back to Christianity at the end of the work?

Alongside the consanguineal ancestors in his romance, Ariosto portrays another type of genealogy—one based upon heroes—that helps explain Ariosto’s construction of Ruggiero’s Islam. Many of the knights in Orlando furioso, including

Ruggiero, seek out the arms and armor of mythical heroes in a way that goes beyond emulation. Rather, such identification with Hector of Troy or Nimrod signifies a greater participation in a heroic genealogy as a type of heir to empire. I argue that

Ariosto’s emphasis of Ruggiero’s Islamic faith, alongside his heroic and blood relationship with Hector serves to underhandedly criticize “Holy Roman Emperor”

Charles V and Spain’s incursions in Italy more generally. I show this in his treatment of not only Ruggiero’s genealogies, but also the jagged palimpsests of Spain “then”

(the present time of Orlando furioso) with “future” Spain in Ariosto’s present time.

Finally, I note how his treatment of the Estensi family as inheritors of Hector’s genealogy supercedes Charles V’s assumed Julian heroic genealogy (the lineage begun with Aeneas and continuing to Caesar Augustus) as seen in textual emendations between the three editions of Orlando furioso.

13

The latter half of chapter two deals with similar competing genealogies in

Spenser’s Faerie Queene, a work that imitates many aspects, characters, and even entire plots from Orlando furioso even as it demonstrates England’s competition with

Ariosto’s Italy and an abstractedly defined “Rome.” Spenser declares that a primary intention of his epic is that it will serve as a manual for the “fashioning” of a gentleman. Indeed, with each book’s allegorical knight (holiness, temperance, chastity, etc.) the concept of “self-fashioning” is perhaps the most overt way that I discuss genealogical construction in the entire dissertation. However, as compared with Ariosto, Spenser had a significant stumbling block with regard to Elizabeth I, to whom he dedicated his work. His aging queen had neither a blood heir, nor a named successor for whom he could “predict” a glorious future by means of his genealogical pageants. As a result, Spenser recounts British “history” in two complementary genealogical pageants that involve Bradamante and Ruggiero’s counterparts,

Britomart and Artegall, as well as the young King Arthur, the legendary British hero who enters each book of the Faerie Queene to assist each knight in his or her quest. In addition to Britomart and Artegall, Spenser anticipates the union of Gloriana, the

Faerie Queene herself, and Arthur in a marriage that never takes place within the poem. Indeed, Spenser’s strategy in dealing with Britain’s past and present crises of succession is to collapse poetical place and time. As with Ariosto’s supercession of

Spain’s Julian-embracing genealogy by means of Hector, Spenser too constructs an

England of superior Trojan descent. He expands upon the Galfridian (Geoffrey of

Monmouth) Brutus myth, prognosticating about the second and third coming of

“Troynouant” or London in a way that displaces “Rome,” a multivalent place and a

14 concept that, as depicted by Spenser, is always inimical to England, Faery Lond, and

Troynouant.

The third chapter demonstrates Spenserian indeterminacy of place and time as well, but in drama. In the four plays that make up the Henriad, Shakespeare reanimates genealogies that are much more recent in time than Spenser’s mythical genealogical pageants. Indeed, for the most part, Shakespeare’s history plays (the Roman plays and the War of the Roses cycle) effectively bookend the chronology of Briton monuments in the Faerie Queene. Is there something in the nature of that fresh history that was more adequately expressed on stage? I begin answering this question by returning again to England’s “Rome,” but approach the notion of Rome with wariness. Similar to England itself, the concept of Rome for England at the end of the sixteenth-century defied temporality and location. Despite this qualification, I demonstrate that, nonetheless, the multivalent concept of “Rome” was integral to the English kings’ genealogical construction as portrayed in Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part

2, and Henry V. In the last play, “Rome” is primarily the ancient Rome evoked by

Plutarch or Julius Caesar’s Commentaries and, as such, a model for empire. However, the imperial ambitions in Shakespeare’s depiction of late fourteenth-century and early fifteenth-century England extend only as far as the English Channel.

Scholars of the Henriad have noted the shadowy presence of Islam and particularly the Ottoman Turkish empire as a kind of foil for England and particularly

King Henry V. Most recent criticism regarding Islam in the Henriad reads Henry V’s antics declaring himself a Christian versus a tyrant or an “Amurath” as Shakespeare’s subversion of authority that rather draws attention to the fact that the king is indeed

15 those things. In my analysis of the plays, I note two competing genealogies of English kingship—one based upon Christianity and divine right and the other based upon heroic Greco-Roman genealogies. Despite Henry IV and Henry V’s obsession with what nowadays would be termed “holy war” against Islam, the kings’ self-fashioning as devout Catholic kings ironically precludes any pretensions to being Alexander the

Great’s or Julius Caesar’s imperial heirs. As I show with counter examples regarding

Ottoman Turkish sultans, the only power successful in styling itself as a Roman (or

Macedonian) Empire come again was the Ottoman Turkish Empire. My reading of the

Welsh Fluellen’s comparison of Henry V with Alexander “the Pig,” even as it relies upon Plutarch’s paralleled lives of Alexander and Julius Caesar, aims to demonstrate that if Shakespeare’s handling of Henry V’s “Turkishness” is indeed subversive, it is because it is emulative, not slanderous.

In the last chapter, I return to the construction of literary genealogies that I introduced in chapter one, but in order to make a larger point about the mixed blood and religious genealogies in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. I begin the chapter by taking Cervantes’ suggestion literally that his readers imagine Sidi Hamete

Benengeli as the supposed “true author” of Don Quijote. Ignoring the multiple infeasibilities of such a subjunctive imagining permits us to view Sidi Hamete and his work in a similar way to Leo Africanus. That is, as Mármol appropriates Africanus’ open-ended construction of his literary genealogies, Avellaneda, the author of an apocryphal sequel to the first part of Don Quijote, engages in an unauthorized continuation of Sidi Hamete/Cervantes’ “verdadera historia.” Cervantes presents Sidi

Hamete as a Muslim author at the intersection of imitatio and isnad. Specifically, I

16 note that Don Quijote encapsulates the anxiety of what I call overgoing of epic imitatio within the figure of the knight himself. Don Quijote is the ideal humanist interpreter in that he never indicates a sense of belatedness or inadequacy, but believes that he can exhume the past of his romances directly into his own time. Indeed, it is

Don Quijote’s understanding of a hero’s relationship with his epic author—one that clashes with the views of Sancho and Sanson Carrasco—that best articulates the role of “truth” in epic imitatio.

No sooner does Sidi Hamete/Cervantes articulate a theory of imitatio and overgoing, then he breaks it down by mocking it alongside other vestiges of the romance genre. Upon closer analysis, it appears that Sidi Hamete’s Don Quijote partakes in isnad just as much, if not more than imitatio. Or rather, as seen in conjunction with Avellaneda’s apocryphal Part Two, Sidi Hamete dominates the second volume of Cervantes’ Don Quijote even more than the first volume by means of isnad. Avellaneda takes the premise of Don Quijote—that he found a foreign manuscript that was translated into Castilian—and composes a sequel with the same main characters of the knight and his squire Sancho Panza. In his parodying of romance, Avellaneda is ironically more successful than the original. Minimally, he demonstrates an awareness and exploration of the principle of overgoing within imitatio. However, Avellaneda’s poor understanding of the mixed literary genealogies in Don Quijote result in a “sequel” devoid of the richness, brio, and authenticity of the original that ends up in merely reducing the story that he aimed to imitate. That is, he succeeds in an imitation, but neither correct imitatio nor isnad in Sidi Hamete’s literary genealogy.

17

More so than with imitatio, Sidi Hamete’s isnad in the second volume of Don

Quijote ironically brands the work as real and truthful. The intertextual commentary by Don Quijote’s three transmitters (Sidi Hamete, the morisco translator, and the narrator) illustrates the process of verifying the accuracy of the work is a way similar to isnad. In addition, the characters of the true second volume reassert Sidi Hamete’s authority by denying any participation in the Aragonese author’s false sequel.

However, the insistence upon Sidi Hamete as a real person has the dual purpose of not only eliminating the Avellaneda “glitch” in the genealogy, but also underscoring

Spain’s mixed heritage, particularly the ineradicable Arabo-Muslim influences. I conclude the chapter with an analysis of the reunion of Sancho Panza and his former neighbor, Ricote the morisco. Their exchange is rife with qualifications about the recently expelled moriscos’ place in Spain. I suggest that with this episode Cervantes asks not only who is Muslim or Christian, but also rather, “Who is Spanish?” and indeed, what is meant by “España?”

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Ch 1. Describing and Constructing Europe’s Africa

In the present chapter, I discuss Leo Africanus, and his work, La descrizione dell’Africa, as a point of intersection and intertextuality between assumed “Eastern” and “Western” genealogies. By “assumed” I mean not our mistaken assumptions about the East or West, but rather the way that early modern writers, including Leo

Africanus, approach or construct genealogies (as well as titles) as part of their work and authorial personae. For instance, several Turkish Sultans called themselves

“Kaiser” or “Caesar,” which can be seen as an Eastern construction of a conventionally Western framework of power. In the case of Selim I, such a title was in direct competition with both papal and Hapsburg powers west of Constantinople by donning the name of one of the most well known conquerors of supposedly European ancestry.19 His successor, Suleiman I, contracted Venetians to create a crown for him, combining aesthetic elements of the papal tiara and Charles V’s coronation crown, which may be seen as a sign that he disputed their power in Europe, particularly the

Holy Roman Emperor’s appropriation of the title “Caesar.”20

I begin by analyzing how Africanus and his text reify and unravel distinctions between geographical-religious categories such as “East” and “West” by genealogic manipulation, primarily in the arena of authorship. By highlighting numerous discrepancies within the Descrizione (such as Africanus’ inconsistent stance towards

19 Jean Bodin in Method for the Easy Comprehension of History, trans Beatrice Reynolds (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 13 claims that Sultan Selim modeled his career on that of Julius Caesar. See also Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia 13.9 (Bari: Laterza, 1929) 4:44, who reports that Selim frequently studied the deeds of Alexander and Julius Caesar. 20 See Gülru Necipoglu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry,” The Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 401-427.

19

African people or his stories touching on the honesty and integrity of an author), I demonstrate that his complicated identity as an author at the crossroads of both Islam and Christianity and also Africa and Europe is perhaps best understood by his own identification as a “compiler” or ‘compositore.’ The way in which Africanus partakes in isnad, an authorial chain of transmission, enables him to generate authority with his contemporary audiences while simultaneously affecting the subsequent authors in his chain.

I conclude with a discussion of an adaptation of Africanus’ Descrizione, Luis del Mármol Carvajal’s Descripción general de Affrica (1573-99), briefly discussing

John Pory’s A Geographical Historie of Africa (1600). Although these works are a continuation of the literary genealogy to which Africanus belongs, there are significant differences between the Descrizione and these illegitimate “offspring.” (Notably, Pory advertises his work as a translation of the Descrizione, not a novel work.) Sometimes the later authors adhere closely to Africanus’ work, while other times their adaptations write him out of their histories completely. With some divergence between Mármol

Carvajal’s Spanish Catholic text and Pory’s English Protestant text, we see a reification of Christian and Muslim categories that Africanus had depicted as much more nuanced, if not unsustainable. Finally, I demonstrate that the way in which

Africanus adapts traditional Muslim isnad literary transmission ironically also permits

Mármol to re-appropriate Leo Africanus’ Descrizione in his Descripción with the intent that his book might serve his king and nation as a weapon against Islam.

20

The man most commonly known as Leo Africanus was born Hassan ibn

Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi21 (or sometimes “al-Gharnati”) in the

Kingdom of Granada around 1485.22 In 1492, he immigrated with his family to Fez, where he received training to become a faqih, a scholar trained in Islamic law. Several decades later, returning from a diplomatic mission as an ambassador in Egypt in 1517, he was captured by the Spanish pirate Don Pedro de Cabrera y Bobadilla and handed over to Pope Leo X, in whose honor he was baptized as “Giovanni Leone.” Some historians speculate that Africanus eventually returned to North Africa and to his

Islamic faith as well but the evidence is equivocal.23 His manuscript, Libro de la

Cosmogrophia [sic] et Geographia de Affrica (1526), was written in Italian for a largely Christian audience, with lengthy descriptions of African terrain, peoples, languages, food, and animals.24 Between 1550 and 1563, Giovanni Battista Ramusio

21 Beyond the letter ‘ayn, Arabic names and words are transcribed without diacritical marks. 22 I would like to follow Natalie Zemon Davis in calling Leo Africanus by his Arabic name, which he signed in various Latin manuscripts in the Vatican library. However, the shortened version she uses, “al-Hasan al-Wazzan,” the nisba of his paternal grandfather, merely indicates his first name, “Hassan,” and his grandfather’s profession, a weigher, “wazzan.” Thus, calling him “al-Wazzan,” does not reveal anything of his chosen name or profession. Africanus adds to his nisba alternating titles of “al-Fasi,” ‘from Fez,’ and “al-Gharnati” ‘from Granada.’ Thus, though it would be more appropriate to refer to him as “Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Gharnati/al-Fasi,” I will call him “Leo Africanus” to be concise. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006). 23 Marica Milanesi, Introduction to Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Navigazioni e viaggi, v.1, (Turin: Einaudi, 1978), 11-17. 24 Al-Hasan al-Wazzan, Libro de la Cosmogrophia [sic for Cosmographia] et Geographia de Affrica. MS V.E. 953. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome. Working close to the libraries in Rome, historical geographer Angela Codazzi “discovered” the original manuscript in 1933. Though the postscript says that the manuscript was completed March 10, 1526, she suggests that the composition date could be as early as 1523, “Della Descrizione esiste un manoscritto acquistato nel 1932 dalla Vittorio Emanuele di Roma, il quale presenta divari dall’edizione ramusiana, dalla quale derivano tutte le alter stampe e traduzioni. Sebbene l’explicit dell’edizione ramusiana e del ms. Romano porti data del 1526, l’esame dell’opera consente di ritenerla già compiuta non più tardi del 1523,” “Leone Africano” in Enciclopedia italiana, vol 20 (Rome, 1933) 899.

21 published Africanus’ work as Della descrizione dell’Africa e delle cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Africano. The Descrizione was the first work in

Ramusio’s Navigazioni e viaggi, a volume of diverse and current texts regarding the known world.25 Perhaps because it presented information by an author who had actually lived and traveled throughout the continent it was immediately popular and was translated into many languages. Africanus’ Descrizione served as the premier source on Africa for Europeans until the nineteenth century, supplanting previous

African histories authored by Herodotus, Pliny, and John Mandeville where the continent housed preposterous beasts, dog-headed men, and the like.26

Few scholars have worked with the manuscript, and only one discusses the differences between the two texts, focusing on Ramusio’s politicization of

Africanus.27 Because this chapter deals with literary genealogies, I will quote mainly from Ramusio’s version of Africanus, indicating differences in the Cosmogrophia manuscript only when they are applicable. Specifically, I cite Ramusio not only

25 Except where noted, I will refer to Marica Milanesi’s edition of Ramusio’s La descrizione dell’Africa di Giovan Lioni Africano, in Navigazioni e Viaggi, 19-460. 26 Instead, it seems that these anthropomorphic beasts and other abnormal humans, such as the Amazons, were displaced instead to literature of the Americas. Sir Walter Raleigh, for example, discusses the Caora peoples, “a nation of people, whose heades appeare not aboue their shoulders,” but goes on to give the European myth described by Mandeville suggesting that he had it confirmed by Topiawari’s son, whom he brought with him to England, The discoverie of the large, rich, and bewtifvl Empyre of Gviana, (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968) 69-70. The first English descriptions of the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay, for example, were derived from Pory’s version of Africanus. See Pekka Masonen’s The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages (Helsinki: The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2000). 27 Oumeline Zhiri focuses upon the politicization of Africanus by Ramusio in “Leo Africanus, Translated and Betrayed” in The Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Luise von Flotow, and Daniel Russell (Ottowa: University of Ottowa Press, 2001). Notable work on the manuscript has also been done by Natalie Zemon Davis in her book-length study on Africanus, Trickster Travels and by Pekka Masonen in The Negroland Revisited,165-206.

22 because it was his version that was read by the next generation of readers and writers of Africanus’ history, but because as the editor, Ramusio too is a reader and writer of

Africa.

Leo Africanus’ Literary Genealogies

Leo Africanus begins his Descrizione dell’Africa by describing various genealogies of the inhabitants of Africa. His section, for example, on the “Origins of

Africans” ‘Origine degli Africani’ is reliant upon the contemporaneous notion of degrees of blackness derived from the offspring of Noah. According to this line of thinking, Ham’s direct lineage is responsible for the darker people living in sub-

Saharan Africa (“Terra dei negri” in Africanus’ text) whereas Saba’s fair-skinned descendents populate the Maghreb. As Africanus puts it:

The Africans truly from the land of the blacks all originate from

Cush, son of Ham, who was the son of Noah. Therefore, the

difference between white and black Africans is, both descend

from almost the same point of origin: if they [white Africans]

came from the Philistines, the Philistines themselves are from

Mizraim, son of Cush, and if they [white Africans] proceed

from the Sabeans—Saba was the son of Raamah, who was born

of Cush.28

28 All translations are my own. There are no English editions of Leo Africanus’ Descrizione, aside from Robert Brown’s edition of John Pory’s translation, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained.

23

Gli Africani veramente della terra negra dipendono tutti dalla

origine di Cus figliuolo di Cam, che figliuolo fu di Noè.

Adunque, qual sia la differenza tra gli Africani bianchi e tra i

neri, eglino tuttavia discendono quasi da una medesima origine,

conciosiacosaché, se essi vennero da’ Palestini, i Palestini

medesimamente sono del legnaggio di Mesraim figliuolo di

Cus, e se procedettero da’ Sabei, Saba eziandio fu figliuolo di

Rama, e Rama nacque pure di Cus. (Descrizione 24-25)

Though Africanus could have easily used this discussion to emphasize racial difference, he instead declares unity amongst the populations of Africa. Black or white, all African races trace back to Noah, the “same origin” ‘medesima origine,’ quite different than, for example early modern Spanish notions of “sangre pura” ‘pure blood.’29 Ironically, Pory’s translation of Africanus’ Descrizione has given rise to scholarship linking Africanus’ text to racial demarcation—particularly of “tawny moors”—and also to Shakespeare’s Othello.30 I suggest that such passages where

Africanus points to overlapping racial genealogies such as the one above (and as we shall soon see, “Western” and “Eastern” genealogies), were purposely omitted or mistranslated by his readers and adapters because of the threatening possibility of similarity. As I will argue, in Mármol’s Descripción, for example, he barely

29 For analysis of Leo Africanus’ description of color and Noah’s sons see Davis, Trickster Travels, 130-133. 30 See Kim F. Hall’s Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995) 27-44 and Jonathan Burton’s “‘A most wily bird’ Leo Africanus, Othello, and the Trafficking in Difference,” in Post-colonial Shakespeares, ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin (London: Routledge, 1998) and also his Traffic and Turning Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005).

24 acknowledges Africanus as a source, in order to avoid implication with a Granadan

Muslim author.

Leo Africanus describes two different notions of genealogies to explain the contention between Sunni Muslims and “schismatic” ‘scismatici’ (Descrizione 49) or

“heretical” ‘eretici’ (Descrizione 158) Shi’a Muslims. He details the coming of Shi’a

Islam to Fez and tells of its Moroccan founder, Idris ibn Idris, “a certain heretic from the time of the pontiff [his word for caliph] Aron” ‘un certo eretico nel tempo di Aron pontefice’ (Descrizione 158) who broke from the Sunni Muslim Abbasid caliphate of

Baghdad.31 Idris’ genealogy runs directly to Mohammad, “because he was the grandson of cAli, the cousin [father’s brother’s son] of Mohammad, and thus belonged to his [Mohammad’s] family through both his mother and his father,” ‘percioché egli fu nipote di Hali, fratel cugino di Maumetto, che ebbe per moglie Fatema figliuola di

Maumetto, e cosí fu della familigia da canto del padre e della madre’ (Descrizione

158).32 According to Africanus, Shi’a Islamic succession would be based upon a true blood genealogy. Their ideal caliph originates from Mohammad by means of either a female bloodline via the prophet’s daughter, Fatima, or her husband, cAli, who is also

Mohammad’s cousin. As opposed to the Shi’a, Muslims see their genealogy, leading to the same point of origin in Mohammad, as one of male-elected caliphs, independent

31 “Aron,” Haroun al-Rachid, is said to have chased out (and then potentially assassinated) Idris the elder because his origins would have supplanted his claim to the Abbasid Caliphate. For more see International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences, Daniel Cogné, and Claire Boudreau, Genealogica and Heraldica Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Ottawa, August 18-23, 1996, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1998) 244. 32 In Arabic, the word for cousin is much more specific than in Italian. I assume that with “fratello cugino,” Africanus attempts to write “ibn camm,” or a paternal cousin (specifically the son of a father’s brother).

25 of bloodlines. Africanus’ endorsement of Sunni Muslims as legitimate advocates a different type of genealogy—one based upon not bloodlines, but perhaps upon merit.

(I would argue that this type of genealogy would familiarize the process of Roman

Catholic papal election as well—perhaps why he called caliphs “pontefici” in Italian.)

Finally, from the beginning of Africanus’ Descrizione, he demonstrates a method of describing Africa that appears to reinforce geographical-religious categories

(Christian Europe and Muslim Africa) through genealogies. For important cities,

Africanus typically offers an etymology of the city’s name (which is often purely anecdotal), an explanation of how the current population (popolo) came to settle there, and finally a description of the origins of the inhabitants. Africanus’ treatment of the continent of Africa as a whole follows precisely this formula. First he declares that,

“Africa in the Arabic language is named Ifrichia from faraca, a verb that, in Arabic, is similar to division in Italian” ‘L’Africa nella lingua arabica è appellata Ifrichia, da faraca, verbo che nella favella degli Arabi suona quanto nella italiana divisione’(Descrizione 19). Africanus continues, offering two other reasons why

Africa is linked to the concept of “division.” The first is because “this part of the earth is separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea” ‘Questa parte della terra è separata dalla Europa per il mar Mediterraneo’ (Descrizione 19). The second reason is that a supposed King Ifrico was chased out of his homeland in “Arabia Felice”

(current-day Yemen) and settled in Carthage, which, writes Africanus, is the reason

“Arabs” consider Africa to be only the area west and inclusive of Carthage

26

(Descrizione 19). 33 In Africanus’ etymology of “Africa,” faraqa is indeed the Arabic root for the words “to divide,” and “to distinguish.” But that is not the correct root for

Africa, or Ifriqiya, whose etymology is independent and has four—not three—root letters.

Why does Africanus begin his work by emphasizing division? As Natalie

Zemon Davis points out in her study of Leo Africanus’ life, the Arabic word “Africa” designated not the landmass, but rather the people who lived in the area surrounding

Tunis (125-126).34 Africanus likely became familiar with the geographical designation of the word during his time in Europe. Indeed, “Europe” was an unfamiliar term as well. In the beginning of his Descrizione, he describes Africa itself—a continent and a concept—just as he does for many cities in this work. Africanus’ invents both a background and a history for the term “Africa” for the benefit of his Italian Christian readers. Thus, in many ways, Africa’s definition becomes tethered to Europe. Though his comparison of Christian Europe to Muslim Africa is a “North to a South,” not a

“West to an East” as I emphasize in later chapters, Africanus nevertheless reifies the geographical-religious categories assumed by his readership by emphasizing the physical separation of the continents in his definition of “Africa.” Such a definition is opposed to an Africa that is conceptually divided by territories that, for medieval Arab

33 Africanus writes, “Gli Arabi non tengono quasi per Africa altro che la regione di Cartagine, e per tutta Africa comprendono la parte occidentale solamente.” Different from the notion of an Ottoman Muslim East and European Christian West that I discuss in my other chapters, Africanus clearly states that the West is Africa for Arabs (the “magrib” in Arabic). 34 Davis writes that the word ‘Awrufa’ existed, but in the ninth century a Persian geographer used it to include Spain, the Franks, the Slavs, the Byzantine empire, and all of Mediterranean Africa, but Egypt. More frequently, Europe was the “land of the Rum” or “the Franks” or “the Christians” as in al-Idrisi’s comment, “Rome is one of the columns of Christianity, the seat of a patriarchate…[Its] perimeter is immense.’” Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds, 126.

27 historians, often also included Islamic Iberia. On the other hand, by suggesting that

Africa’s name might also have derived from “King Ifrico,” he offers an alternative or equally plausible explanation of Africa’s history that is not dependent upon “Europe.”

One could view his insertion of the fables and history of Africa as a way of situating and indeed dignifying “Africa” within these categorical boundaries. Africanus both reinforces categorization of Africa and Europe with the terminology he acquired in

Italy, and also breaks these categories down by emphasizing the common ground of origins tracing to Noah as if to assert “we are both West.” Finally, he states that

Africa has a long and distinguished history (“antico” is often his word of choice), even if he has fabricated it for the benefit of his Italian readers.

Of all the genealogies in Africanus’ work, the one that best demonstrates the intersection of Muslim and Christian categories is Leo Africanus’ self-presentation as a historian. To begin, throughout Africanus’ Descrizione, he refers to “i nostri cosmografi arabi” or “i nostri istorici,” or “our Arab cosmographers” and “our historians.”35 Africanus cites an almost uncountable number of Arab-Muslim authors in his work, including al-Mas’udi, al-Bakri, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), and

Ibn Rachich. His use of the first-person plural, “noi” and “nostri” ‘ours,’ when referring to his Muslim predecessors’ work on Africa is a way of including himself in a genealogy of Arabo-Islamic historiographers and cosmographers. In another of

Africanus’ extant works, De quibusdam Viris Illustribus apud Arabes (On Some

35 Muhammad Hajji, the first to translate Africanus’ text to Arabic, reclaimed Africanus for Morocco precisely because of his use of the word “we.” He argued in his Sorbonne dissertation that this proves Africanus’ feigned conversion to Christianity and continued devotion to Islam, L’activité intellectuelle au Maroc à l’époque Sa’dide, 2 vols. (Rabat: Dar El-Maghrib, 1976-77). See Ramusio, Descrizione, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 50 for instances of both “istorico” and “cosmografo.”

28

Illustrious Men Among the Arabs), he cites several biographers as his sources for his biography of illustrious Arabs.36 Such a chain of transmission functions similarly to an isnad, a chain of trustworthy authorities transmitting either khabar (virtually any kind of account) or hadith, stories related to Mohammad’s words and actions, which typically originated from either someone very close to him or from the Prophet himself.37 The isnad functions as a figurative name-tag attached to the beginning of hadith and khabar, both words related to verbs that express the idea of “informing,”

“recounting,” or “reporting.” Both nouns demonstrate the strikingly anecdotal character of Arabic written narrative.38

In the Descrizione, Africanus never explicitly names isnad. This is perhaps because in Arabic historiography isnad gradually became burdensome for historians.

Chase Robinson writes:

Whatever its utility in the short term, the isnad, like other traditionist

tools, was poorly suited for the job of crafting history in all its forms. It

was one thing to identify witnesses for the relatively circumscribed

arena of Prophetic activity (twenty years or so in the Hijaz), but quite

another for conquest battles in Spain, not to mention the career of

36 Davis notes that Africanus omits the names of scholars who taught him, like al-Ghazali, but that he memorized a great poem on the Qur’an by the Persian polymath al-Tughrai when “he studied in Fez as a boy,” Trickster Travels, 229-230. See also De quibusdam Viris Illustribus apud Arabes, 37r, 43r, 44v, 52r, 63r in Davis’ note 19, p. 361. 37 See Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 15-17 and Reynolds, Dwight F., et al. Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) 37. 38 Robinson writes that “If the report is a hadith from the classical period—that is, from the late ninth century onwards—this isnad bears a series of names, which starts with the book’s compiler, descends through generations of transmitters, and usually ends with a witness: ‘so- and-so told me, on the authority of so-and-so, who said: so-and-so told me, on the authority of so-and-so, who said: I was with the Prophet of God one day, and he said: “Seek knowledge, even as far as in China,”’” Islamic Historiography, 16.

29

Alexander the Great. Was one to limit the scope of history to those

events for which one could identify and quote an eyewitness? In

addition, there were considerations of scale and style. In lengthy works,

complete or even incomplete isnads could occupy an enormous amount

of valuable space (paper was not free) and consume a copyist’s

expensive time (abbreviations were introduced, but these hardly

addressed the problem). Moreover, in works of any length, isnads could

be regarded as narrative intrusions, brakes all too often applied on the

reader’s momentum. Lengthening isnads taxed the paper manufacturer,

the copyist and the reader’s attention and patience. (97)

While one solution was to eliminate isnads altogether, another was to combine them by synthesizing discrete accounts of the same event into a single version—the

“collective” isnad or “combined report.” However, “traditionists” took offense at this since “it risked blurring lines of transmission and—perhaps more important— endowed authors with more authority than these traditionist transmitters thought seemly” (97). Robinson does not expand upon how these combined isnads functioned to endow their authors with more authority. Perhaps, when a historian cited multiple sources (with or without isnads), the threat to isnad’s authorization lay in the fact that the author was the only one in possession of all accounts of a story and thus had the last word regarding the veracity of his information. One imagines that the decision to eliminate an orthodox isnad from Arabic histories was additionally affected by a broader, more secular readership, and in the case of Africanus, by a non-Arabophone one as well. For Christians, Africanus would be the ideal authority on Africa. He is a

30 trustworthy author because he was both an eyewitness to African peoples and places and more important for his Christian readers, he would be reputable because he was presumably safely converted to Catholicism. That is, he is the same, but just different enough.

Although Africanus never explicitly names isnad in the Descrizione, his constant enumeration of noteworthy Arab authors results in a similar framework, what

I would call a modified “European isnad,” for his Italian manuscript. What kind of work does this European isnad do for Leo Africanus? How would the citation of

Muslim authors, many of whom Italian readers would have been ignorant, have resonated with his Christian audience? In the margins of the Descrizione, Ramusio cites a certain “Rafis medico” who dedicated his books to “Questo principe detto

Mansor” (Descrizione 99). I take this to be Averoës, the well-known author of Arabic texts who was supported by Ya'qub al-Mansur in al-Andalus. However, most of the authors listed by Africanus were still unknown in Italy. Even had Africanus patently invented Arabic names, I believe it would not have mattered. Rather, I propose that instead of alarming his European readers, the Islamic background of both Africanus and the cited writers increased his authority with his Christian audience by sheer enumeration of names.

In this way, Africanus’ version of isnad may have appeared similar to imitatio, another literary chain of transmission, whereby entire works, diction, and style were imitated by Renaissance writers and historical or mythical individuals were depicted as examples to be imitated by readers. As I discuss in the fourth chapter, imitatio applies to works like Machiavelli’s Il principe, but also literary figures such as

31

Aeneas. Timothy Hampton considers how classical, and biblical figures depicted by early modern writers served as exempla for princes and society in general. In particular, he discusses the importance of the concept of exemplarity for history, whether the exemplars reflect or act upon individuals and their interpretive communities, or something in between.39 David Quint elaborates how such imitation works upon the epic genre to evoke both former powers (particularly the Roman

Empire of Caesar Augustus) and then go beyond and project that power for the author’s contemporary society.40 Following Homi Bhabha, Barbara Fuchs has described a similar type of transmission that she labels mimesis of empire, a deliberate performance of sameness that, by imperfectly copying its original, destabilizes and calls it into question.41 Like Hampton and Quint, her concept applies to genre (mainly epic and romance for Fuchs) and to individuals, but Fuchs describes how the process involves the authors as well. For example, she analyzes how morisco authors of the libros de plomos or fraudulent “lead books” discovered at the end of the sixteenth- century in Granada demonstrate a mimesis of inclusion.42 The morisco authors of the plomos wrote a fake history of early Catholicism in Spain, within the rhetoric of Islam and with Arabs as the first Catholics to perform mass in Europe. In this way they copied Church doctrine with biblical rhetoric while adapting it to their ultimate

39 Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). 40 David Quint, Epic and Empire. 41 Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam and European Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 42 Moriscos were formerly Muslim subjects of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon who had converted to Christianity.

32 purposes of gaining less restrictive inclusion for moriscos in Catholic Spain.43 In the case of the plomos, mimesis confers authority; by creating an invented precedent of former Arab Catholicism the authors thus hope to affect their present conditions in

Spain. Imitatio, exemplarity, and mimesis differ significantly from isnad, however, because the former systems of transmission are primarily retrospective. Whether

Renaissance epic, Machiavelli’s Il principe, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, or the plomos, each work gazes towards its precedent, its exemplar, or model and the contemporary text is then recast as the “future” text, with “future” heroes, in the contemporary society. I suggest that in the Descrizione, the framework of isnad is noticeably different. Isnad is unquestionably retrospective in seeking and proving sources; however its ultimate purpose is transmission, preservation, and perpetuation, and thus it also points to a future moment, text, and author. I argue that within

Africanus’ work, isnad, particularly in its incomplete state in the Descrizione, serves to unite the various histories and descriptions of Africa in Africanus’ literary chain of transmission such that no single description stands completely alone. Isnad carves out a place for such a unique figure as Africanus and a place for his Africa within and as part of Europe.

There are some poignant, reflective moments in the Descrizione where

Africanus describes what I have termed a European isnad and reveals an awareness of his unique position within it. Similar to the genealogy of Arab historiographers on

Africa, Africanus participates in a genealogy of “European” authors on Africa, with

43 See also Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier City, 1492–1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

33 whom his readership would be much more familiar. In various instances, he mentions

Pliny and Ptolemy to confirm his facts.44 Introducing a section on animals, he explicitly refers to Pliny:

Now, we move on to tell of the animals, in which I will not

offer to recount all of the animals one might find in Africa,

which would be truly almost an impossible feat, but rather only

those that are not found in Europe or those which have some

difference from them (European animals) … and (I will) surpass

what Pliny has written. Though he was certainly a scholarly and

singular man, in some small details regarding Africa he

certainly made errors, not by his own fault, but by those who

informed him and by the authors who had written before him:

but a mere stain does not have the ability to diminish the beauty

of a graceful and well-made body.

Ora passiamo a dire degli animali, nel che non mi offerisco di

raccontare di tutti gli animali che si truovano in Africa, che

sarebbe invero quasi cosa impossibile, ma di quelli solamente

che non sono nell’Europa o di quelli che hanno qualche

differenza da quest’altri […] e molte cose trapassando che sono

scritte da Plinio. Il quale certamente fu un dotto e singulare

uomo, quantunque in alcune piccole cose dell’Africa egli

44 In the margins, alongside Africanus’ description of the ebb and flow of the Nile river, Ramusio writes, “This column, called a Niloscope by Pliny, signals the bounty or famine of that year” ‘Questa colonna detta da Plinio Niloscopio segno della abbondanza o, della carestia di quell anno,’ Ramusio, Descrizione, 410.

34

certamente prese errore, non per colpa di lui, ma di chi lo

informò e degli auttori che inanzi a lui scrissero: ma pure una

macchietta non ha forza di estinguere tutta la bellezza d’un

leggiadro e ben formato corpo. (Descrizione 439)

Just as Africanus creates a place for himself at the end of a genealogy of Arab cosmographers, his comments regarding Pliny similarly suggest that he is the culmination of an isnad of European authorities on Africa. First is Africanus’ qualification of his choice of African animals: he will include only animals that do not exist in Europe, or those with significant differences from European animals. His extensive knowledge of both European and African animals allows Africanus to make such distinctions.

The second part of the above quotation from Ramusio’s edition has some striking differences from Africanus’ Cosmogrophia manuscript. In the Cosmogrophia,

Africanus writes,

It may be presumptuous not to note the things which Pliny wrote and

recounted so fully in his most famous work, for which Pliny was a truly

great man and worthy in the sciences and arts, however he erred in a

few little things, most of all in things regarding Africa, which is why

the compiler himself will not blame such a person [Pliny], but rather

those who told him the aforementioned things that one does not find at

all, and those who wrote before him, and there is a well-known,

common Arabic proverb stating, “How can a whore’s piss pollute the

wide sea?”

35

“& ben che’ sarebbe gran Prsumptio ne’ de scriuere le cofe quali ha

scrpte & narrate Plinio amplamente’ in la sua Famosissima opera del

ch’ Veramente Plinio fu maximo homo & dignissimo in le’ scientie &

arte’ ma pure’ fu gabbato in alenne’ cofoli/ne maxime’ in le’cose che’

toccano Affrica del che’ipso compositore non incolpa vna simile’

Persona ma da la colpa ad quilli che’ narrorono le dce’ cose’ che non se

trouano in effecto simelmente’ in colpa quilli che hanno scripto auanti

de luj ma sava como el Vulgaro Prouerbio qual se’ dice in lengua

Arabica qual brutteza fala vrina de’ un putto in la suma del Acqua del

Mare’.” (Libro de la Cosmogrophia [sic] et Geographia de Affrica Fol

441v) 45

Where Africanus had written modestly that his judgment of Pliny’s errors might seem

“presumptuous” ‘presumtio,’ Ramusio edited the text to have Africanus boast that he will “surpass” ‘trapassare’ the works written by Pliny, perhaps one of the most famous

European authors to have written on Africa. In both versions of the text, Africanus carefully exonerates Pliny, pointing out that he was still a scholarly man despite his errors. However, Ramusio’s “tra-passando”—that is “going beyond” or “surpassing”

Pliny’s errors or fabricated animals, or even correcting them—is again possible because of Africanus’ intimate personal knowledge of Africa as an African.

“Trapassando” also evokes Italian admiration for a man who had traveled, physically

“passing through” Africa beyond Pliny’s journeys into the continent. Given that

Africanus’ Descrizione was the first and lengthiest text in Ramusio’s collection, such

45 Note that I have only changed the long into short “s.”

36 an editorial change advertises the novelty and accuracy of Africanus for the European readership in comparison with previous European writers.

In both the manuscript and published versions of the text, there is something uncanny in Africanus’ hasty excusal of Pliny. One might define this as a tension between the frameworks of imitatio and isnad. Given Pliny’s reputation as a European writer-explorer, it would be logical for Africanus to weave Pliny into his work to his advantage, noting where he follows the Roman historian’s work as an exemplum.

However, he pointedly turns away from this model, which (though possibly

“presumptuous”) advertises his superior knowledge to outdo Pliny in accuracy. He instead offers what reads as a description of isnad, or more specifically, of Pliny’s flawed isnad. In the passage, Africanus’ cautious allocation of blame to Pliny’s predecessors evokes a faulty European sort of isnad, or an incomplete chain of transmission. Africanus elaborates that Pliny was not culpable for his errors describing

Africa, but rather the authors “narrando” before him (Cosmogrophia, 441v).

“Narrating,” verbally recounting stories of Africa from one author to the next, is the primary way isnad functioned for the transmission of ahadith.46 Perhaps Africanus’ leniency towards Pliny results from the awareness that, as the next author in this isnad of historians on Africa, he too may be in the same position as Pliny, with future readers criticizing his errors, whether “piss” or mere “stains.”

Indeed, Ramusio’s exchange of Africanus’ crude Arabic proverb, “How can a whore’s piss pollute the wide sea?” for the more refined, “A mere stain does not have the ability to diminish the beauty of a graceful and well-made body,” suggests

46 Ahadith is the plural of hadith.

37

Ramusio’s awareness of Africanus’ unique literary system of transmission in the word

“corpo.” Ramusio reads Africanus’ literary contribution similarly to one epic poet in competition and emulation with another—imitatio. Africanus’ proverb compares

Pliny’s errors on Africa to the filth of a prostitute’s urine, a far nastier description than

Ramusio’s “little stain,” but one that not so subtly suggests that those errors— misinformation on Africa—are perhaps less acceptable than Africanus will directly admit (a fact perhaps confirmed by his rejection of Pliny). However, in Ramusio’s proverb, “corpo” functions as a metaphor for Pliny’s work as a whole. “Corpo,” with its dual significance as a human body and a body of literary texts, applies not only to

Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, but to Africanus’ work. Being “bodily” stains, they may signify errors in Africanus’ Descrizione, his African, Arab, and Muslim identities or perhaps (in the eyes of a Muslim African reader) even his Italian Christian identity.

Whatever they might be, they threaten the credibility, authority, and future transmission of his text. However, the manner in which Africanus describes isnad to excuse Pliny creates a new framework for his European readers—one that Ramusio seems to subsume in his use of “corpo”—letting them know that he will not permit such egregious errors in his chain of transmission. Africanus’ comments suggest that if his work is seen as the continuation of imitatio, then his work is both imitation of and vast improvement upon the exemplum. This is because he has the authority of isnad, or more accurately, an adapted isnad, and his transmitters—unlike Pliny’s—have given Africanus authorized and true accounts. Africanus considers himself an appropriate heir to European writers on Africa—indeed, one who trumps all before him because of his ability to construct a new literary genealogy, a system overlapping

38 both European and Muslim literary genealogies demonstrating that those two things

(Muslim and European) are not antithetical, but sometimes even the same thing.

While Ramusio’s Italian publication was clearly not crafted for Arabic readers in Africa, one wonders whether Africanus considered the possibility of his work coming into the hands of someone like him (a Muslim bilingual in Italian and Arabic) during his lifetime. Rather than signifying Muslim or racial taint, could his “stains” then represent his New Christian identity? The Arab historiographers cited would be impressive homage, but the multiple disparaging remarks on Africans, likely disturbing. To illustrate, I offer two brief examples illuminating Africanus’ complicated stance on the “nobility” of Africans.

First, he describes the rude, “rozzo,” and uncivilized method of eating on the floor, without a tablecloth, and with one’s hands.47 Although he confesses that the

North African couscous and tajines are delicious, such table manners demonstrate that,

“the lowest Italian gentleman lives more sumptuously than the most elevated man in

Africa” ‘il più vil gentiluomo d’Italia, vive più suntuosamente che ‘l maggior signor d’Africa’48 (Descrizione, 184-5). Having lived in both Granada and Fez, Africanus would likely have eaten this way all his life, so why does he make such harsh

47 “In comparison with European noblemen’s way of life, that of Africans is truly miserable and low, not for the poor quality of food, but for the boorish and disorderly customs that they have in eating, which is upon the earth over certain low tables, without a tablecloth or drape of any sort, and one does not use any silverware other than one’s hands.” ‘Ma a comparazione del vivere che si usa fra’ nobili nella Europa, il viver degli Africani è veramente misero e vile, non per la poca quantità delle vivande, ma per lo costume rozzo e disordinato che essi tengono nel mangiare, il quale è in terra sopra certe tavole basse, senza mantile o drappo di niuna sorte, e non si adopera altro strumento che le mani,’ Ramusio, Descrizione, 184. 48 He discusses the main course eaten during the summertime, “Il verno mangiano carne lessa, insieme con quella vivanda che è detta cuscusu, la quale si fa di pasta come i coriandoli, e lo cuoceno in certe pignatte forate, per ricevere il fumo d’altre pignatte,” Ibid, 184.

39 judgments? In addition, he lived in Rome long enough to encounter a member of the so-called “vile” sector of Italian gentlemen and could compare him with one of the many African kings who he met as an ambassador. Does he believe his statement that the lowest “gentleman” in Italy lives more sumptuously than the most elevated in

Africa? What is meant by this assertion? Further, does Africanus make this statement from the point of view of an “African” or as a “European?”49 “In a sense,” writes

Davis about this issue, “Yuhanna al-Asad wrote his book with two audiences in mind.” She cites the varies Italian translations for Arabic words for which there were no equivalents for his primary audience in Italy. However, Leo Africanus also had

African, or minimally North African readers and listeners in mind, as evidenced by the information on Mamluk Egypt (on the eve of the Ottoman occupation) or the Land of the Blacks under the Songhay emperor (Davis 106-7).

Indeed, in a counter-example related to Africanus’ budding career as a man of letters, he recounts his visit to a high-ranking man in the mountains of Tenueues, “a most generous man” ‘un signore liberalissimo uomo’ (Descrizione 123-24), who had requested a meeting with his uncle. In his uncle’s stead he presents many gifts, but the one most cherished by this “signore” was his “gift of words” ‘presente di parole,’ a

“canzone” of Arabic poetry that Africanus composed in his praise. In return, the man invites Africanus to a lavish supper and gives him three slaves and one hundred ducats for his uncle, and a horse and fifty ducats for himself. At the end of this lengthy story,

49 In Davis’ history and imagining of Leo Africanus’ life, for example, she approaches this issue through his name. Prior to his conversion, she calls him al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al- Wazzan and when describing his time in Europe, or dar al-harb [in Arabic, the “land of war”] she calls him Yuhanna al-Asad (John the Lion), which “suggests the entanglement of values, perspectives, and personae in his life in Italy and the next seven years,” Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels, 65.

40

Africanus explains: “I have offered this discussion in order to demonstrate that even in

Africa there are gentlemen and noblemen, just like the gentleman of this mountain”

‘questo discorso ho voluto far per dimostrarvi ch’anco nell’Africa vi sono gentiluomini e cortesi signori, sí come il signor di questo monte’ (Descrizione 125).

The purpose of this story surely cannot be merely to demonstrate to his readers that

“gentlemen” exist in Africa. It also cleverly feigns modesty while still informing his readers that he is an accomplished and respected poet.50 Of particular note is his use of the word “ancor,” or “even,” an emphatic word that translates here as, “even in Africa there are gentlemen.” “Ancor” suggests that Africanus is comparing Africa with a place where “gentiluomini” are expected. Europe is implied. Further, “ancor” indicates that Africa lacks nobility—a notion that Africanus seeks to disprove here. For

Africanus, his story serves to demonstrate that Africa can be a place where culture, particularly letters, is nurtured and appreciated. Despite his frequent disparagement of

Africans, Africanus’ reputation as either/both an African or/and European author is tethered to the notion that Africa has literary culture. His inconsistent stance towards

Africans ironically serves to blur the continental distinctions that he initially proposed in the beginning of his work. It is also a way of situating himself and his text between

Arabo-Islamic and European literary systems of transmission in a way that suggests that Europe and Africa are both the cultured “West.”

50 The inclusion of samples of someone’s poetry is standard practice in Arabic biography. In autobiography this often marks a highly emotional event in the author’s life, Dwight F. Reynolds et al, Interpreting the Self, 93. Since Africanus’ Descrizione contains so many stories from his own life and travels in Africa, it is also part autobiography too and thus the inclusion of poetry would have been appropriate. See also his inclusion of a translated poem from the Granadan poet El Dabbag in the Cosmogrophia, 313v and in the Descrizione, 314.

41

Leo Africanus as a Collaborator

What do Africanus’ discrepant views on Africa jointly reveal about his identity

(as an author) and about the geographical-religious categories of Africa and Europe represented in literature during his lifetime? Africanus’ given name demonstrates what readers (such as Ramusio) anticipated learning from him. His given eponym “the

African” was meant to both typify an African person and also suggest something about the purpose and content of his work. The Pliny exchange shows that he is acutely aware of his (perhaps self-appointed) task to define Africa and Africans for a

“European,” Italian audience. The episode where Africanus criticizes African dining etiquette comes across as contrived for the benefit and flattery of his European readership. As we shall see, there are many more criticisms at the end of Book I where

Africanus offers lists of “African” virtues and vices, purportedly in order to be balanced in his assessment for his readers. However, the juxtaposition of what

Africanus describes as crude African table manners as compared with the more sophisticated European ones is striking for its very comparison. These are not discrete criticisms, but ones that, like the initial description of Africa itself, are tethered to

Europe for definition. Only after spending time in Italy can he then retrospectively reflect upon and define the culture of Africans. Analyzing this section in isolation from the rest of the Descrizione, it seems that Africanus believes that one’s outward social behavior is what dictates being a gentleman, and that the European standard—a proper dining table, silverware, and linens—is the model.

Such unfavorable pronouncements towards African people might bring forth accusations of treachery, given that Africanus lived so long in the continent. Yet,

42

Africanus does not describe himself or his learning as fully belonging to one religion, or geographical side of the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, Africanus’ non-committal stance towards African and European gentlemen epitomizes that of a collaborator, one who complies with an enemy occupying force often at the betrayal of others. Ronald

Robinson’s and Edward Said’s observations regarding colonial collaboration provide a useful frame for interpreting Africanus’ ambivalence. Despite the fact that both scholars focus upon colonial collaboration several hundred years after the sixteenth- century, the theory applies to Africanus and his work in several ways.51 As I have pointed out in the introduction, one problem with applying Said’s writing to the early modern period (and one reason that he wrote Culture and Imperialism as a sequel to

Orientalism) is that nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western “imperialism” does not exist in a perfectly parallel way in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Collaboration typically involves a native collaborator who (often traitorously) engages with the colonial powers for personal gain. The closest Western “colonial” equivalent during Africanus’ time in Italy was undoubtedly Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor.

However, the dominant “empire” was that of the Ottoman Turks.52 This complicates

Said’s Orientalism thesis in that the dominant power of the early modern

Mediterranean was not a Western country or power, such as the motley Holy League, but rather the Ottoman Empire, a distinctly geographically “Eastern” power.

51 Robinson focuses upon nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism,” Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. Owen and Sutcliffe (London: Longman, 1972) 118, while Edward Said deals with several types of Western colonialism in the nineteenth century, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993) 262-281. 52 See Caroline Finkel’s Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2005) and Daniel Goffman’s The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

43

Comparison of Africanus’ situation to that of colonized subjects within nineteenth-century imperialism is also potentially thorny because Africanus did not come to Europe voluntarily. That is, as opposed to serving as a colonized subject in

Africa, Africanus arrived in Rome as a captive and spent the first year in the prison of

Castel Sant’Angelo. Despite these caveats, Said’s and Robinson’s comments regarding collaboration are still valuable for an appreciation of both Africanus himself and his text. Robinson states that:

Any new theory must recognize that imperialism was as much a

function of its victims’ collaboration or non-collaboration—of

their indigenous politics, as it was of European expansion [. . .]

Nor without indigenous collaboration, when the time came for

it, could Europeans have conquered and ruled their non-

European empires [. . . ] Native mediation was needed to avert

resistance or hold it down. (118-20)53

Taking up Robinson’s ideas in the context of a reassessment of the work of Frantz

Fanon, Edward Said argues that Robinson “might have added, although he does not, that many of the classes and individuals collaborating with imperialism began by trying to emulate modern European ways, to modernize according to what was perceived of as European advancement” (Said 262). Indeed, through the “native mediation” of his written text, Africanus brings Africa to the Italians. His criticism of

African dining etiquette in preference of Italian utensils, tables, and tablecloths

53 Ronald Robinson “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Owen and Sutcliffe, Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, 118 and 120.

44 coincides in striking ways with Said’s description of the initial stages of a victim’s collaboration. Such collaboration begins with an individual’s (at least publicly advertised) emulation of European ways, seen as modern or more advanced. This is one reason that Africanus appears to have no qualms about stating that the lowest

Italian gentleman lives better than the most elevated African one. Africanus resembles a colonial collaborator in how he reveals to his Italian Christian readers secrets that only a traitor to Africa and Islam would uncover. For example, he discusses the presence of African “salnitro,” or gunpowder, close to Italy, the opportunity for slave exploitation in Sub-Saharan Africa, and even the existence of Christian strongholds

(whether factual, as in Egypt, or mythical, as in the Prester John legend of Ethiopia) that would appeal to his European readership for their potential alliance.54

As a young ambassador in 1512, Africanus delivered a letter to Yahya-u-

Tacfuft, an important Berber conspirator in the town of Safi who typifies Robinson’s and Said’s role of a collaborator. Tacfuft’s life was epitomized by his shifting allegiances. In late 1506, he was an accomplice to a Berber friend in assassinating the

Muslim mayor of Safi, and then usurped the power of the town for himself. While pledging support to the Portuguese, Tacfuft intrigued with their Moroccan opponents, fleeing to Lisbon once his life was in peril. He returned in 1516, however to serve as lieutenant (capitão-de-campo) for the Portuguese. On one hand, Tacfuft pleased King

Manuel I with military victories over Mulay al-Nasir, the brother of the Wattasid

54 Africanus seems to goad the Italians to plunder gunpowder mines by telling them just how much profit they could earn—“it would bring forth twenty thousand ducats or more per year” ‘renderebbe di frutto all’anno venticinquemila e piú ducati’—if they were only to try, Ramusio, Descrizione, 137. For an illuminating discussion of the Prester John myth, see David Quint’s chapter on Clorinda in Epic and Empire, 234-247.

45 sultan, and over the sultan of Marrakesh. On the other hand, he angered the Portuguese governor by issuing ordinances and taxes for himself, rather than for the Christian authorities. Though Tacfuft always claimed to support the Muslim leaders clandestinely, he set up his Portuguese base amongst them and issued penalties against them as though his authority trumped that of the Malikite judges of Fez.55

Africanus, though balanced in his description of the bloodshed between

Christian Portuguese and Muslim African forces in North Africa, offers a thinly veiled critique of Tacfuft. He writes that “certain Portuguese merchants…advised [their king] that the city was quite divided, and that, by means of gifts, they had made a strong alliance and treaty with one of the heads of the factions such that, with little cost and no difficulty, they would be able to rule the city” ‘certi mercatanti portogallesi’ …lo avisarono che nella città erano molte parti, e che essi per forza di doni avevano fatto una stretta domestichezza con uno de’ capi delle dette parti e un trattato tale che senza niuna difficultà e con poca spesa verrebbe a impadronirsi della città’ (Descrizione,

109). This intriguer, “one of the heads of the aforementioned [divided] factions” ‘uno de’ capi delle dette parti,’ was Yahya u-Tacfuft. Africanus never overtly faults Tacfuft for his collaboration with the Portuguese. However, his exaggerated tone in recounting Tafuft’s advice that the city of Fez could be (and was) overcome by “little cost and no difficulty” is tacit criticism of how a Muslim traitor with shifting alliances was complicit in the Christian success in Africa. For token bribes and power, Tacfuft

55 For an extensive discussion of the complicated politics of Tacfuft see Matthew T. Racine, “Service and Honor in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese North Africa: Yahya-u-Tacfuft and Portuguese Noble Culture,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 71-80.

46 hands over the city. Africanus testifies to the power that Tacfuft wields to have so much depending upon his actions.

Africanus later adds that after Yahya (“Iehia”) was sent to Portugal, King

Manuel “had to send him back to Africa to govern the land surrounding the city because the King’s captain did not understand the way of those ignorant people and how they should be handled: the city remained almost uninhabited, and all of the country ruined” ‘lo rimandò in Africa per governo della campagna della detta città, perché il capitano del re non sapeva l’uso di quell’ignorante popolo e come ei si dovesse maneggiare: la qual città rimase quasi disabitata, e tutto quell paese si rovinò’

(Descrizione, 110). As Africanus recounts it, the Portuguese need Tacfuft. He is the only person capable of mediating their power in Safi. In his case, intimate “insider” knowledge really is power, but not power he could have acquired without the

Portuguese. Again, though Africanus is cautious in allocating blame, the city and country finally fell to “ruins” on the watch of bribe-taking, traitorous Tacfuft.

As an author for an Italian Catholic audience, Africanus’ account of the fall of

Safi and criticism of Tacfuft also reads as an Italian critique of Portuguese colonialism.

However, as a former Muslim, Africanus’ tenuous indictment of Tacfuft also illustrates an awareness of how their roles as collaborators overlap. I suggest that

Africanus’ collaboration-as-author is similar to Tacfuft’s collaboration-as-governor for the Portuguese. That is, collaboration can occur within a literary work too. Africanus also wields a great deal of power. Whether he knew it or not (and we do not know who, if anyone, commissioned him to write his manuscript), his Descrizione would bring his version of Africa and its peoples to all of Europe. In 1518, Tacfuft died after

47 being stabbed in the back by some of the “divided parties” ‘molte parti’ of Fez whom he had angered with his treachery.56 When and if Leo Africanus ever returned to

Africa, his fate could have been, and maybe was similar to Tacfuft’s. Perhaps he did resettle in Africa, and similarly negotiated his survival as a returned, renegade traitor to Africa and to Islam.

What sets Africanus apart from collaborators like Yahya-u-Tacfuft is his balanced stance towards African Muslims (and even towards Tacfuft too). His role within isnad is important as well. One could make the case that there is a role for authorial collaboration in an imitatio-based genealogy, where hyperbolic description and outdoing Pliny dovetail with unwarranted criticisms of Africa. However,

Africanus’ position as an author within isnad protects him somewhat, since his function would entail merely preserving and perpetuating previous writers’ histories of

Africa. Finally, he is neither literally nor metaphorically handing over Africa to the

Italians. Being a “collaborator” is only part of his identity as author. In order to better analyze these subtleties, I turn to the most frequently noted section of Africanus’

Descrizione, the back-to-back stories of a dutiful executioner and an amphibious bird.

Leo Africanus the “Compositore”

Most literary analyses of the stories of the dutiful executioner and the amphibious bird, and indeed of any portion of Leo Africanus’ text, are not of the

Italian in Ramusio, but rather based upon John Pory’s English translation from 1600,

56 Racine writes that “Yahya’s death was a disaster for Portuguese in Dukkala because it was only respect for him, or at least for his power, that kept the mouros de pazes paying their tributes,” “Service and Honor,” 88.

48 which has occasioned Africanus’ comparison with Shakespeare’s Othello.57 For example, Jonathan Burton writes:

The author of the Geographical History is, like Othello, ‘doubly

tainted’ and in need of establishing the credibility of his adopted

subject-position as John Leo Africanus, an objective, converted-

Christian historian for a European readership. For this reason,

Africanus declares himself by ‘the straight law of history

enforced’ to catalog the ills of an Africa he describes as

‘infected with the Mahumetan law,’ […] Certainly in this

moment of apparent anti-Islamicism, Africanus seems to

deserve allegations of cultural treason. (Traffic and Turning,

235)

“Allegations of cultural treason” is a harsher way of describing Robinsonian collaboration. However, as with much criticism on Africanus’ Descrizione, such allegations fail to fully consider Africanus’ captivity and conversion in Italy.

Ultimately, despite Africanus’ disparagement of fellow Africans, Burton concedes that

Africanus also praises Africans. His analysis of Pory’s translation of Africanus is admirable for his aim to demonstrate Edward Said’s contrapuntal analysis, or

“drawing out silenced or marginalized voices” to demonstrate that there was always

57 The first to argue that Africanus’ text was a source for Othello was Lois Whitney, “Did Shakespeare Know Leo Africanus?” PMLA 37 (1922): 470-83. For more recent criticism see Patricia Parker for analysis of discovery and the sexualized notion of “laying open” in Women, ‘Race’ and Writing in the Early Modern Period, ed. Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker (New York, Routledge, 1994) 84-100. See also Jonathan Burton, “ ‘A most wily bird’ Leo Africanus, Othello, and the Trafficking in Difference,” in Post-colonial Shakespeares, ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin and also his Traffic and Turning Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624.

49 some type of active resistance “to the dominant Western discourse” (39). However, one problem with Burton’s analysis is that such strong anti-Islamicism, such as the phrase “infected with the Mahumetan law,” only appears in Pory’s voice in the

English translations, not in Africanus’ Italian. As Natalie Zemon Davis points out, one explanation for Africanus’ criticisms of Islam or Africa generally may be taquiyya, the precautionary dissimulation of one’s Muslim faith and religious practices under circumstances of coercion.58 Burton is not the exception, however.59 There is very little criticism that deals directly with Africanus’ Italian text. In addition, as I have indicated with Africanus’ blurred literary genealogies, the Descrizione is not an ideal selection for true contrapuntal analysis to a “Western discourse.” As I have shown, such a decision implies that the Descrizione is a categorically “Eastern” (or Muslim) counter-text, which is a complicated, if not wholly incorrect assumption.

I will quote the following passage at length from Ramusio’s version, indicating differences from Africanus’ Cosmogrophia only when relevant. Africanus’ two stories are intimately connected to his own vision of the task of an author and his identity more generally as it pertains to Muslim and Christian genealogies. After endless and contradictory cataloguing of particularly nasty “vizii e parti biasimevoli,” or African vices (Descrizione 64-66), Africanus defends himself, writing:

58 Natalie Zemon Davis cites two exceptions, both occurring in the late section on Egypt, Trickster Travels, 160. For more on Africanus and taquiyya, see Bernadette Andrea, “Assimilation or Dissimulation?: Leo Africanus’ ‘Geographical Historie of Africa’ and the Parable of Amphibia,” ARIEL 32.3 (2001): 17. 59 Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness, 28-40 discusses a portion of Pory’s translation of Africanus’ Geographical History to make conclusions about early modern race, gender and sexuality. However, as with the vehement anti-Islamicism analyzed by Burton, the “black,” “tawny,” and “white” distinctions of race in the English edition simply do not exist in the Italian Descrizione.

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I do not hide my own embarrassment in confessing and discovering African vices, given that Africa was my nursemaid and [the place] where I grew up and spent the most beautiful part and majority of my years. But rather, I will offer as my excuse, the job of a historian who is bound to tell the truth of things, without a doubt, and who must not give in to the desire of anyone: in this manner I am necessarily constrained to write what I write, not wanting to distance myself from the truth in any way, and leaving ornaments of words and artifice aside.

And in my defense, I hope for the gentle souls and virtuous persons who deign to read this, my long effort, that the example of a brief little story will be enough.

Non m’è ascoso esser vergogna di me medesimo a confessare e scoprire i vituperi degli Africani, essendo l’Africa mia nudrice e nella quale io sono cresciuto e dove ho speso la piú bella parte e la maggiore degli anni miei. Ma faccia appresso tutti mia scusa l’officio dell’istorico, il quale è tenuto a dire senza rispetto la verità delle cose, e non a compiacere al desiderio di niuno: di maniera che io sono necessariamente costretto a scriver quello che io scrivo, non volendo io in niuna parte allontanarmi dal vero e lasciando gli ornamenti delle parole e l’artificio da parte.

E in mia difesa voglio che ai gentili spiriti e alle virtuose

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persone, che si degnerano di legger questa mia lunga fatica,

basti lo esempio d’una brieve novelletta. (Descrizione 66)

Unlike Tacfuft, whose actions were dictated primarily by self-advancement,

Africanus’ (declared) motivation for authorial collaboration, or “uncovering” the vices of African peoples, is adherence to the truth.60 In offering a preemptive excuse for the slanderous section on African vices, Africanus again demonstrates an awareness of how he might be accused of traitorous collaboration for such statements. A major difference between Africanus’ literary collaboration and Tacfuft’s actual collaboration is Africanus’ transparency and attempt at balance in telling the truth (preceding the list of vices he presents a list of African virtues).

To illustrate his point, Africanus continues with the story of the dutiful executioner:

In my country there was a young man of poor condition and of a

wicked and horrible life, who, for a petty and impulsive theft, was

condemned to be beaten. The day he was to be beaten arrived, and as

he was to be lashed at the hands of the minister of justice, he

recognized this executioner to be his friend; which is why he felt sure

that he [the executioner] would treat him with respect that he did not

offer to others. However, the executioner, on the contrary, began with a

most cruel, searing beating, to which his poor companion, beside

60 “Scoprire” recalls the reunion of Sancho and Ricote in Don Quixote II: 54, where Ricote tentatively says, “Si tú no me descubres Sancho[…]seguro estoy que en este traje no habrá nadie que me conozca,” where “descubres” simultaneously means to “recognize,” “uncover,” and “to tell on,” Miguel de Cervantes, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, II, ed. Luis Andrés Murillo, 48.

52 himself, yelled loudly: ‘Brother, given that I am your friend, you treat me terribly.” The executioner then, giving the second beating responded: ‘Comrade, it is necessary that I do my job as it is meant to be done, for here is no place for friendship.’ And he continued, one after the other, until he had given him the amount [of lashings] ordered by the judge. Which is why, if I were to fall silent regarding their

[African] vices, I would rightly fall under suspicion, and some would believe that I had done that because I too had these [vices], and worst of all, lacking those virtues that the others have. Which is why, since I do not have another excuse, I propose to take on the attributes of a bird, the nature of which I will describe in another brief and pleasant little story.

Ragionasi che nel mio paese fu un giovane di bassa condizione e di malvagia e pessima vita, il quale, per un furto di piccolo momento preso, fu condannato a essere scopato. Venuto il giorno nel quale costui dovea aver le scopature, dato in mano de’ minstri della giustizia, conobbe il boia esser suo amico; laonde ei si tenne piu che sicuro ch’egli a lui quel rispetto avrebbbe che agli altri non era uso di avere.

Ma il boia in contrario, incominciando le scopature, la prima gli diè molto crudele e incendosa, alla quale il povero compagno smarrito gridò forte: ‘Fratello, essendo io tuo amico, tu mi tratti molto male’. Il boia allora, dandogli la seconda maggiore, rispose: ‘Socio, a me convien fare il mio officio come si dee fare, e qui non ci ha luogo

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amicizia’. E seguitando di mano in mano tante ne gli diè, quanto gli

furono imposte dal giudice. Per il che quando io tacessi i vizii loro

potrei cadere in giusta riprensione, e alcuni crederebbono che io cio

avessi fatto per avere ancora io di questi la parte mia, massimamente

essendo all’incontro privo di quelle virtú che gli altri hanno. Nel che io,

poi che altro a mia difesa non ho, mi propongo di tenere a punto il

costume di uno uccello, la natura del quale se io vi voglio dire, a me

conviene scrivervi un’altra brieve e piacevole novelletta. (Descrizione

66)

Most scholars ignore this episode, or choose to discuss it in passing, limiting their discussion to Africanus’ preceding catalogue of the virtues and vices of Africans.61

Instead, they discuss the “piacevole novelletta” regarding the amphibious bird that directly follows it:

In the days when animals could speak, there was an elusive and spirited

little bird, above all endowed with a wondrous cleverness, and who

possessed an additional nature—it was able to live under the water as

well as above land amongst the birds. Each year, all the birds of his age

were accustomed to paying a tribute to their king. For which reason, it

occurred to the little bird to not pay anyone. And when the hour arrived

in which the king sent one of his officials to collect tributary taxes, the

61 See Jonathan Burton, “A most wily bird” in Post-colonial Shakespeares and Traffic and Turning. With regard issues of how race were received by Europeans see Bernadette Andrea, “The Ghost of Leo Africanus from the English to the Irish Renaissance,” in Patricia Clare Ingham and Michelle R. Warren, eds., Postcolonial Moves: Medieval Through Modern (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) 195-215.

54 wicked little thing, giving him words as payment, took flight and did not pause until he was in the sea, diving into the water. The fish, seeing this novelty, swam about him in a large school in order to understand the reason he had come to live amongst them. ‘Woe is me,’ responded the little bird, ‘don’t you good men know that the world has come to such a point that one cannot live up there anymore? Our cowardly king, because of a certain strange whim that entered his head, wishes to quarter me alive, despite my goodwill and despite that I am the most elite and well-intentioned gentleman of all the birds.’ And he continued: ‘For the love of God, please be content to allow me to lodge with you, so that I can affirm that I encountered more goodwill amongst strangers than with my own relatives and people.’ The fish contented themselves with that, such that he remained there for one year without being burdened by a single thing. At the end of which, the king of fishes, given that it was time to collect tributary taxes, sent one of his servants to the little bird, letting him know that it was customary and the law. ‘He can ask all he wants,’ he said, and taking flight, he exited the water, leaving him quite embarrassed. To conclude, whenever the king of the birds asked this little bird for his tributary taxes, he fled beneath the water, and whenever he was asked by the king of the fish, he returned to the earth.

Ne’ tempi che gli animali parlavano, v’ebbe un vago e animoso uccelletto, e sopra tutto ornato d’un ingegno mirabile, il quale dalla

55 natura aveva questo di piú, che esso poteva viver cosí ben sotto le acque tra i pesci come sopra la terra fra gli altri uccelli. Erano tenuti tutti gli uccelli di quella età di dar ciascun anno certo tributo a il loro re.

Per il che questo uccelletto entrò in pensiero di non ne pagar niuno. E in quell’ora che il re mandò a lui uno de’ suoi officiali per riscuotere il tributo, il cattivello, dandogli in pagamento parole, preso un gran volo non ristette prima che fu nel mare, e si cacciò tra l’acque. I pesci, vedendo questa novità, tutti gli corsero d’intorno a larghe schiere per saper la cagione che lo aveva mosso a venir tra loro. ‘Ohimè’,—rispose l’uccelletto,—‘non sapete voi uomini da bene, che ‘l mondo è venuto a tale che piú non si può vivere di sopra? Il poltroniere del nostro re, per certo capriccio strano che gli è venuto in capo, mi vuole isquartar vivo, non ostante alla mia bontà, che pure sono il piú netto e il piú da ben gentiluomo che sia fra tutti gli uccelli’. E seguitò: ‘Per l’amor di Dio, siate contenti che io alberghi con voi, acciò che io possa dire di aver trovato piú bontà negli stranieri che nei miei proprii e tra la mia gente’.

Si contentarono di ciò i pesci, laonde egli vi stette uno anno senza esser gravato di cosa alcuna. In capo del quale il re de’ pesci, venuto il tempo di riscuoter i tributi, mandò uno de’ suoi servitori all’uccelletto, faccendogli intendere il costume e chiedendogli il suo diritto. ‘Egli è ben dovere’, disse egli, e preso il volo uscí delle acque, lasciando colui con la maggior vergogna del mondo. Infine, quante volte a questo uccelletto veniva dal re degli uccelli dimandato il tributo, egli fuggiva

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sotto l’acque, e quante volte esso gli era dimandato dal re dei pesci, egli

tornava sopra la terra. (Descrizione 67)

Africanus’ summation of this episode is as striking as it is important for an understanding of his literary project:

What I mean to imply is that wherever a man sees his advantage, there

he will run when he can. Which is why if Africans are slandered, I will

say that I was born in Granada and not in Africa, and if my country is

picked upon, I will remain in favor of being raised in Africa and not in

Granada. In the meantime, I will be favorable towards Africans, and

only recount their vices that are public and apparent to everyone.

Voglio inferire che dove l’uomo conosce il suo vantaggio sempre vi

corre quando e’ può. Onde se gli Africani saranno vituperati, dirò che

io son nato in Granata e non in Africa, e se ‘l mio paese verrà

biasimato, recarò in mio favore l’essere io allevato in Africa e non in

Granata. Ma di tanto sarò agli Africani favorevole, che solamente dei

loro biasimi racconterò le cose che sono publiche e piú palesi a

ciascuno. (Descrizione 67)

Africanus purposefully links the episodes of the dutiful executioner and the amphibious bird in a complementary way. Interpreting them in tandem is crucial for understanding Africanus not only as an intersection of literary genealogies that he has constructed, but as a hinge that sways back and forth, benefiting by playing one off the other.

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The first story functions to explain why Africanus reveals nasty things about

Africans. Like the executioner, who must carry out a punishment regardless of whom he lashes, Africanus must discuss both the good and bad aspects of the peoples of

Africa. Again, this corresponds with isnad transmission. The second consequence of doing his job as it is “meant to be done”—that is, telling the unpleasant truth—is that he fears that, having lived in Africa, he too would be accused of those vices for merely concealing them from his readers. The implicit suggestion in the first story is that the executioner enforces his friend’s prescribed punishment for fear that the same thing could happen to him, and that their roles could easily switch. Looking after himself instead of his friends this place, Africanus’ “country,” is no place for partiality in friendship (“non ci ha luogo amicizia”). Though Africanus initially claimed that he was under no one’s thumb when writing on Africa, his anxiety that his readers would assume that he too partakes in “African vices” (such as sodomy, avarice, mendaciousness, or ignorance) suggests otherwise.62

Law, judging, and Africanus’ role as a faqih function alongside his role as a

Muslim-Christian and African-European author. Just as an author converts truths into words, an executioner enforces a guilty sentence with the prescribed punishment.

However, if Africanus is the executioner, then who is the judge? That is, who is judging the content of Africanus’ work and deciding which universally acknowledged truths belong in it? Perhaps Africanus assumes there is no need for such a function.

Within isnad, his description of Africa must be true because it would have been

62 Africanus writes, for instance, that all of the people of Azaamur were “immersed in the sin of sodomy, such that it was rare that a single young man escaped their hands” ‘immersi nel peccato dela sodomia, in tanto che raro era quell fanciullo che scappasse dale loro mani’ Descrizione, 115.

58 verified by earlier historians. Given the numerous occasions he served as judge for villages he visited, we must also consider the interrelatedness of his professions as an author and a judge.63 One might argue that his task as an author has as much (or more) in common with the notably absent judge as with the executioner. He sees his task as bringing to light the flaws of Africans. Africanus embraces his European side by indicting his African one, and in effect, reifies categories of Muslim “Africa” and

Christian “Europe” with a catalogue of nasty “African” vices—Africans are avaricious, gullible, lascivious, etc.

Under different circumstances, there is always the horrifying fear that he might be the condemned friend, rather than the executioner. We can see this process and condemnation occur even in the editorial changes that Ramusio makes to the

Cosmogrophia manuscript in the section on “African Virtues.” Africanus compliments the inhabitants of Barbary saying that, “they are men of integrity…and what they say, they confirm with proof” ‘Sonno hominj integri …quell che dicono in absentia confirmano in presentia’ (Cosmogrophia Fol 40v). Ramusio qualifies Africanus’ statement, however, by adding that “the histories of the Latin writers state otherwise”

‘le istorie degli scrittori latini, siano stati altrimenti tenuti’ (Descrizione 63). In other words, Ramusio edits the text to indicate that Africans have a history of lying.

Oumelbanine Zhiri suggests that Ramusio’s addition represents a politicization of

Africanus.64 I would add that, more specifically, this is an instance where Africanus’

63 For example, he recounts a comical episode where he is detained for eight days by the people of Semede who, not having a judge, demand that he judge all of their civil cases, only to be repaid by token gifts. One man brings him “un gallo, tale una guscia di noce, uno due o tre treccie di cipolle e altro di aglio,” Ramusio, Descrizione, 103. 64 Zhiri, “Leo Africanus, Translated and Betrayed,” 165.

59 expressed fears come true. One of the most common stereotypes regarding moros or moriscos in sixteenth-century Spanish literature was that they were liars.65 Ramusio’s addition, which implicates Africanus and effectively suggests that he too had those vices as well is highly ironic given that the one accusation that Africanus earnestly seeks to avoid is that of being a dishonest or inauthentic author, (as evidenced by the

Pliny example). In addition, Ramusio’s comment racializes Africanus to be a moro— not an “African” or a “European.”

Though Africanus would have us believe he writes the truth, his claim to a historian’s (or executioner’s) impartiality is as believable as his assertion that he is writing without constraint as a likely-forced convert to Catholicism in the papal arena.

He is not a mere historian reporting “the truth,” but a Muslim captive whose people were conquered and expelled from the Kingdom of Granada and who was then kidnapped from Africa to Italy, where he converted to Catholicism in captivity.66 In this story, the author-collaborator reveals a keen awareness of his precarious intersection between European and Arab genealogies, harshly judging his

“nursemaid,” Africa, because he must.

Before continuing to the story of the amphibious bird, however, it should be noted that in Africanus’ original manuscript, he never directly refers to himself as a

65 Monika Walter discusses the stereotype of lying moors in “La imaginación de moro historiador y morisco traductor: algunos aspectos de la ficticia autoría en el Don Quixote,” in ¿”Bon compaño, jura Di!”? El encuentro de moros, judíos y cristianos en la obra cervantina. Ed. Caroline Schmauser and Monika Walter, Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana, vol. 68 (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 1998). See also Juergen Hahn, who discusses the moro-mentiroso label in Miracles, Duels, and Cide Hamete’s Moorish Dissent (Potomac, Md: Scripta Humanistica, 1992). 66 Note that from 1492 to 1500, the Muslim Granadans lived as mudejares, after which time they were forced to accept baptism of endure expulsion. Mudejarism is the official tolerance and protection of conquered Muslim communities under Christian Rule.

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“cosmografo,” the term he uses when describing “i nostri cosmografi arabi.” In fact, in his Cosmogrophia, Africanus rarely refers to himself in the first person singular, “io,” instead opting for a third person description, “el compositore,” or “composer” in lieu of “author.”67 The very idea of a “compositore” is provocative for its meaning as

“compiler.” Similar to notions of medieval authorship, where a scribe or author collects (sometimes disparate) texts bound together, Africanus’ diction suggests that he, the “compositore,” similarly selects material for his Descrizione dispassionately and objectively. His choices would be based purely upon relevancy and fact. In addition, this label is illuminating because it echoes his claim of writing with a historian’s or an executioner’s enforcement of universally acknowledged “truths.” As I have shown above, regarding the story of the dutiful executioner, it is likely that

Africanus is acutely aware that every author’s selection mimics judging and thus “il compositore” serves as a protective screen for “I, Leo Africanus,” erasing any suggestion of partiality based upon his patria or faith.

Africanus’ choice of a third-person identification as “il compositore,” however, points beyond mere absolution for vituperation of fellow Africans. For this author at the crossroads of many identities and authorial genealogies, perhaps this title serves as a survival mechanism and even, as I have begun to suggest, gives a certain power and authority to his work as he creates his own literary chain of transmission and modified isnad. A partial answer to this question lies in Africanus’ second story of the amphibious bird. In the Descrizione, Ramusio changes virtually all instances of

“compositore” to “io.” However, in the original Cosmogrophia, one of the few

67 For comparison of the two texts and “compositore” see Davis, Trickster Travels, 231.

61 instances in which “io” is written by Africanus himself is in this second, “piacevole noveletta.” It is noteworthy that it is one of the rare times Africanus’ voice steps out of third-person reference.68

In the final story Africanus describes a bird with an “ingegno mirabile,” or “wondrous cleverness” who had the ability to “live equally well under the water as on the earth with birds” ‘poteva viver cosí ben sotto le acque tra i pesci come sopra la terra fra gli altri uccelli’ (Descrizione, 66). He likens the amphibious bird to his own situation as an Arab historian between many countries. Before, continuing my analysis of this passage, I present the Cosmogrophia’s version of the final statement of the first book.

Africanus’ gloss of the story is slightly different from Ramusio’s edited version.

Africanus originally wrote,

Which is why the compositore wants to infer that wherever a man sees

his advantage, there he will remain, and go where words are free. If

Africans are vituperated he will offer the clear excuse that he was not

born in Africa, but in Granada. On the other hand, if Granadans are

vituperated he will find add that he was neither raised in Granada nor

even remembers it, in such a way that, to tell the truth, one must deny

one’s nurturer and nursemaid and not discuss things except those which

68 I have italicized the first person references in the following passage from the Cosmogrophia that occur at the end of the first story and merging into the second. “El mi e/ necessario fare’ lo officio como se’ deue’fare’ pero che’ ce’ sarebbe’ piu scandalo per mj che’ savia assi nicolpato per ragione’ & tenuto per homo che’ ha vna gran parte’ de lj dctj vitij & vituperij maxime’ retrovandome’ priuato de quella pocha virtu & bene la quale’ hanno lj dictj Affricanj a io faro como vno ucello elquale’ anchi se troua in lo cento nouelle’ che po stare’ sotto lacqua como sopra la terra” (43v-44r).

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are well-known, and he could not hide them away even had he wanted

to.

El che’vole’ inferire el presato compositore’ doue’ che’ lhomo vede el

suo vantagio sempre’ ad quillo attende’ & va onde verbi gratia se’ lj

Affricani seranno vittuperatj anche’ ello retrovava la clarissima

scusatione’ che’ non e nato in Affrica ma in Granata se’ etiam lj

granatinj seranno vittuperatj trouava anchi innaltra scusa che’ non e

alleuato in granata ne mino se’ ricorda de’ quella in modo tale’ che’ per

dire’ la verita bisognarabbe de negare’ la sua nudtrice & lactante’ &

anchej non esprimeria de quillj se’ non le’ cose’ che’ sonno piu

publiche’ & generalj le qualj non se’ ponno abscondere’ etiam se’

hauesse’ voluto. (Cosmogrophia 44r-44v)

Africanus writes that “wherever a man sees his advantage, there he will always remain.” However, the rest of the sentence, “& va onde verbi gratia,” is omitted in

Ramusio.’s version.69 “Onde verbi gratia,” latinized Italian that I translate as “where words are sufficient” “thanks,” or “free” likely influenced Ramusio’s earlier editorial change in the Descrizione when the amphibious bird departed leaving “words as payment.” Yet where are words enough? Or free? It seems as though the initial answer is, nowhere. This amphibious animal, neither mere bird nor fish, alternates between the air and the water, but belongs exclusively in neither environment. I will also note that whereas in Ramusio the tributary taxes affect all youth of his age, in Africanus’ original, the amphibious bird appears to be unfairly singled out in the land of the

69 The ablative plural of “gratia” meaning “for free.”

63 birds.70 Whichever of the two places he tries to inhabit, words do not function as a replacement for money, but only as deferment and delay.

On a literal level, perhaps words are sufficient payment. In both versions of the text, Africanus explains if Africans are slandered, then he will protest that he was born in Granada and not in Africa (and thus deflect association with “Africans”); when

Granadans are disparaged, he will insist upon being raised in Africa and, in the

Cosmogrophia, he does not even recall Granada, which may well be true and not just a hypothetical excuse. Though both are notably Muslim identities, Africanus is emphatic that he is neither Granadan nor African. Or rather, similar to the amphibious bird, Africanus is both identities, but manipulates them as it suits him, evasively offering words as payment to those critical of one aspect of his background.

Africanus the “compositore” chooses his homeland as it is convenient for him.

However, different from Tacfuft’s choices (Northern Africa and Portugal), the

Granada and Africa that Africanus evokes are both Muslim places. If we cannot specify his homeland (because he resists), to which country would he belong as the

“native,” captive collaborator? Whereas Tacfuft played Safi against the colonial

Portuguese powers, Africanus is not playing Africa against Granada. Lingering behind his seemingly glib words regarding his identity is the darker backdrop of Italy. One assumes that the vituperation Africanus anticipates for not identifying the vices of

Africans emerges from the mouths of neither Africans nor Granadans. Rather, as evidenced by Ramusio’s editorial addition regarding lying Africans, when Africanus’

70 Africanus makes no mention that other youth of the amphibious bird’s age had to pay the taxes as well. Ramusio’s addition makes the hybrid animal appear flippant: “& quando arriua el re’ de lj ucellj ad domandarlj lo tributo subito el dio’ vcello fuge’ sotto lacgua.”

64 country is “maligned,” it derives from the Italians, in the country of his captivity and his new Christian identity as “Giovanni Leone.” Notably, Hassan ibn Muhammad ibn

Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, or Leo “Africanus,” never claims to be Italian. To do so would perhaps be the decisive step towards Tacfuft-like collaboration, even as an author. It would indicate a full assimilation into Italian society, which a captive like

Africanus would resist if he had intentions of returning to Africa. Africanus never mentions his captivity or any autobiographical experiences during his time in Italy. He chooses no Muslim patria and he remains silent regarding an Italian one.

When Africanus describes the farcical lashings given by the executioner to his friend or the ridiculous explanation offered by the amphibious bird to the fish, one wonders: does Africanus expect his readers to take him at his word? That is, would he mercilessly beat a friend for petty theft? Or, as the amphibious bird, would he, the same man who composed a poem for the gentleman of the mountains (Ramusio writes

“il più da ben gentiluomo”) arbitrarily evade taxation? I believe the comical and exaggerated nature of these stories is meant to give levity to and even mask the tragedy of Africanus’ unmentioned, forced relocations from Granada, to Fez, to

Rome.71 His statement that a man will go wherever he has the upper hand—or where words are “gratia”—is a euphemistic way of describing sheer survival. Short of

71 Davis discusses the possibility of Africanus’ indexing the maqama genre of Arabic literature where a learned voyager describes a trickster man who begs, argues, preaches, pleads, always breaks into poetry, but always landing on his feet to receive gifts bestowed upon him by his trusting listeners. Whether the trickster figure in Persian al-Hamadhani’s’ Maqamat or that in Iraqi al-Hariri’s, this man is always one and the same. Davis writes that as Africanus told his own story that he “put himself in the position of traveling narrator and the trickster vagabond both.” Trickster Travels, 105. For more on the maqama, see Rina Drory’s chapter “The maqama,” in The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 190-210.

65 converting to Christianity, Africanus’ family would have had no choice but to flee shortly after the conquest of the Islamic Kingdom of Granada (and even then

Africanus’ remaining Granadan relatives would have been expelled and relocated in

Spain with all other moriscos beginning in 1567).72 Likewise, one wonders how

Africanus, newly baptized in Christian captivity, would ever have managed to write a

Cosmogrophia entirely lauding Africans. Such a text would not have survived, and it is likely that neither would have its author. We cannot assume that Africanus had free agency in his sometimes nasty depiction of Africans.

I propose a reading of the amphibious bird story with a stronger consideration of Africanus’ Granadan descent, not because he identified with Granada more than his other homelands, but because it was the beginning of his complicated and intercontinental identity. Specifically, to which continent does Granada belong for

Africanus? Recall that for Arab historiographers, the concept of “Africa” was a grouping of Arab communities rather than a landmass, and sometimes included the

Islamic lands of Iberia. However, as we have seen, Africanus adopts Italian terminology with continental distinction for “Africa” and “Europe,” defining them as

“divided” places. In the amphibious bird story, while Africa signified his nursemaid,

Africanus emphasizes that Granada is his “country” ‘paese’ several times throughout his book. In many ways, this aspect of Africanus’ hinge-like, liminal identity—an intersection of European and African literary genealogies—is best encapsulated precisely by his Granadan birth. Certainly we can accept his assertion that he is

72 Note that not all relocation was forced. Granadans and Moroccans moved freely between Africa and Europe for several centuries. For more on this, see David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada.

66 sometimes African, but as we know from other passages in the Descrizione, for

Africanus, a Granadan is also European.73 Africanus considers himself European not because he has lived in Italy as a Christian, but rather because he was born in Iberia as a Muslim. This is one explanation for Africanus’ strangely inconsistent tone in the two stories and his fluctuating stance towards Christians and Muslims, Africans and

Europeans, in the whole of the Descrizione. Both his description in Ramusio of a wily exchange of words instead of tributary taxes (“dandogli in pagamento parole”) and his original statement in the Cosmogrophia of a place where “words suffice” evoke his other “presente di parole” to the African gentleman in the form of a poem. His

Descrizione, written in captivity for his Christian readers, is yet another type of payment, a text in lieu of a “tributo,” whatever that may signify in the context of Italy.

Africanus appears in a darker, more constrained, and tragic light than a silly, amphibious, tax-evasive bird haphazardly choosing between two places.

Reinterpreting the Granadan aspect of his identity offers a glimpse of a people who, displaced from the Muslim kingdom of Granada, must settle with alternately calling themselves “African” or “Granadan,” part of old “Europe” (inclusive of

Muslims) for the readers of new “Europe.” Africanus’ third-person reference as

“compositore,” then, serves as a protective measure that allows an amphibious author who is at various times Muslim-European, Muslim-African, and Christian-European—

73 Africanus equates Granadans with Europeans when he discusses textiles in the markets of Fez, “stanno i mercatanti de’ panni di lana, cioè di quelli che vengono d’Europa, e sono questi mercatanti tutti granatini,” Ramusio, Descrizione, 176. Of course “quelli” could refer not only to the merchants, but also their wool cloth, but this too suggests the merchants are from Europe since they are trading “European” wool.

67 and sometimes none of those things—to survive in an early modern Mediterranean world where such blurred identities are not only intolerable, but perilous.

Turning one last time to the end of this passage, we see that Africanus directly confronts the problem of “truth” in writing history. In the Cosmogrophia, he emphasizes that one must deny one’s nurturer and nursemaid in order to “dire la veritá” ‘tell the truth’ another important fragment that Ramusio omitted. That is, speaking the truth can only occur with a bit of censure, even if it means slandering the place you were raised. This simple statement merges nicely with isnad, a literary genealogy that prizes authenticity and truth for transmission. As the “compositore” of the authoritative history of Africa, and exemplar text for editions and translations to come, Africanus carefully adapts the system of isnad, to cohere with the complicated politics of his time and places. Sometimes he relies upon second-hand, vouched-for anecdotes from people he meets, while other times he quotes reliable Arab historians who had more complete isnads in their works. He carefully compliments European gentlemen, but criticizes one of their foremost historians of Africa, Pliny. On the other hand, he strongly criticizes African etiquette, while praising African letters and learning. Such a history of Africa is only possible for an author of such a mixed identity, and only possible with his mutable, isnad-like literary system of transmission.

And it is in the metaphorical space where Leo Africanus’ genealogies meet, his

European isnad and his Arab one where, perhaps, “words are free,” or can be expressed freely.

Africanus’ readers: Mármol and Pory

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Ironically, the very structures that give Africanus authority and immunity to recount the truth become the same ones used by some of Africanus’ readers in order to adapt his text as a potential weapon against Africa and Islam. In 1573, approximately a quarter of a century after Africanus’ work appeared in Ramusio’s Navigazioni e viaggi, Luis del Mármol Carvajal, published the first part of his Descripción general de Affrica in Granada (and published the second part in 1599 in Málaga, around the time of his death).74 Like Africanus, Mármol was a native of Granada. However, he was not a New Christian. Mármol also suffered a period of captivity, but under quite different circumstances than Africanus’ in Italy.

Based upon his claim that he was fifteen years of age when he took part in the conquest of Tunis, we suppose that Mármol was born around 1520 to an Old Christian family.75 During his military career, he was taken prisoner in a battle near Oran, in western Algeria, around 1545. According to his own words, Mármol endured seven years and eight months of captivity during which time he was a slave in parts of

Morocco, Algeria, and Libya.76 An unidentified redemptionist ransomed him around

1554, but he remained in Africa, journeying likely as far as Egypt, Ethiopia, and even the borders of the Sudanic zone. After twenty-two years in Africa, he finally returned to Spain in 1557. After then fighting in the imperial army in Italy, he came back to

74 Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Descripción general de Africa (1573-1599). 75 Don Angel del Arco y Molinero alleges that Mármol had a Muslim background, but without substantiating his claims. See Tomas Garcia Figueras’ “Españoles en Africa en el Siglo XVI: Los géografes e historiadores, Luis del Mármol Carvajal (1520-1599)” AIEA 3.10 (1949): 73. Hypotheses are inspired by his close relationship to Alonso del Castillo, son of a morisco, who did much for the development of Arabic studies in sixteenth-century Spain. 76 Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Descripcion general de Africa, ii.

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Granada in time to witness the morisco revolt, which he documented in his Historia del [sic] rebelión y castigo de los moriscos del Reino de Granada (1600).

Mármol’s Descripción begins with a poem by Hernando de Acuña that gives us insight as to how the historiographer’s work was considered upon its publication.

Acuña writes:

Affrica (en fama y nombre esclarescida

y en tan diuersas cosas admirable

confusamente en general sabida

sin poderse saberlo mas notable)

tal se nos muestra en MARMOL esculpida

con todo quanto della es memorable

que Europa y Asia (para ygual memoria)

ya piden con inuidia nueua historia.

The introductory poem contains an obvious pun on Mármol’s name, which nevertheless invites speculation regarding the purpose of “history” in this historia and invites further reflection on Mármol’s adaptations of Africanus. Hernando de Acuña’s pun metaphorically equates the Descripción de Affrica with a marble sculpture. Each is created, he seems to suggest, from a shapeless pre-existing mass of either stone or information. As Michelangelo insisted, the real sculpture always existed beneath the marble. A proper artist—or writer—lovingly liberates that shape, “everything remarkable about Africa” ‘todo quanto della es memorable’ from the excess that surrounds it. Acuña emphasizes that Africa is “confusamente en general sabida/ Sin poderse saberlo mas notable.” It is paradoxical, he suggests, that while everyone

70 knows something general about Africa, no one really knows the particular details, or

“lo más notable” ‘the most noteworthy.’ Further, as indicated by “confusamente”

‘confusedly,’ past information on Africa is often misunderstood or perhaps misconstrued. Africa presents itself to us (“se nos muestra”) sculpted in marble, or sculpted by Luis del “Mármol” Carvajal’s Castilian prose. Knowledge of the continent cannot be transformed from general to particular without the discerning words of an author like Mármol, he suggests. As both “Europa” and “Asia” clamor enviously for

“historias” of their own, the hyperbolic poet invites us to consider that perhaps Africa might not even exist, its past dissolving into amorphous information, without being crafted and written down as a “historia” by Mármol.

One could make the argument that this is also what Africanus set out to do with his Cosmogrophia, to write a “historia” of Africa that emphasizes its importance and value by debunking misinformation in past texts—things “confusedly understood.” In fact, as suggested by the final lines of the poem, where Acuña writes that Asia and Europe desire histories of their own, Africanus also wrote that he planned to undertake the task of writing histories of those two continents as well

(Ramusio 429).77 This fits the mold of a classical historian such as Ptolemy or Pliny, writing about the known world (but interestingly, ignoring the almost century of knowledge of the “new” Americas). What Acuña seems to not know, since there was not yet a Castilian translation of the Descrizione, is that Mármol is not the first to sculpt a new “Africa,” since in many ways, the first work had been done already by

Africanus. However, Mármol’s “historia” is of a very different nature than Africanus’.

77 He writes this in the Cosmogrophia as well, 432v-433r.

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Though Leo Africanus’ texts are not called “historias” in the titles of either the manuscript version (Libro de la Cosmogrophia [sic] et Geographia de Affrica) or

Ramusio’s version (Della descrizione dell’Africa e delle cose notabili che quivi sono per Giovan Lioni Africano), both Mármol’s work and John Pory’s A Geographical

Historie of Africa, itself a translation of Florianus’ Latin version, advertise themselves as such. Similar to historias verdaderas, each of these works leads us to assess the meaning of “truth” from the perspective of the reader, the author, and from an ideal, objective, and omniscient perspective that does not actually exist. In Africanus (and in

Mármol and Pory as well), the objective “truthful” past is always carefully constructed in a way that intentionally, or unintentionally, reveals something about the author’s background and motives and that, in turn, colors the way we read his work. As

Africanus’ stories about the dutiful executioner and the amphibious bird illuminate, the task of a “compositore” is to determine just what truth is, and according to him, to have the audacity or courage to speak those truths from a presumably objective vantage point. And, as Africanus wrote in the Cosmogrophia, he “could not hide them away them even had he wanted to” ‘Le qualj non se’ ponno abscondere’ etiam se’ hauesse’ voluto’ (Cosmogrohpia 44r-44v).

Luis del Mármol Carvajal’s Descripción General de Affrica purports to undertake the same task as Leo Africanus—an updated historiographical text on

Africa—but in Spanish. Though literary scholarship of the past century typically considers Mármol to be merely Africanus’ plagiarist (because he cites Africanus but twice), Mármol’s work is not actually a translation of Africanus’ Descrizione (unlike

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Pory’s English History and Description).78 One reason for this confusion may be as simple as the fact that the Descripción is understudied. There are several historical surveys of Mármol and his Descripción from the end of the nineteenth century and a smattering of studies thereafter.79 While his Historia del rebellion y castigo de los moriscos is frequently studied with regard to morisco literature and Islam in Iberia, his

Descripción is infrequently mentioned and no edited versions exist. The only published text is an unedited facsimile of the 1573 first volume (Libros I and II) with merely a biographical introduction.80 The work is three volumes long (the “Primera

Parte” is contained in two volumes while the “Segunda Parte” is an additional volume, published a quarter of a century later, in 1599, at Mármol’s expense) and divided into twelve “libros” with separate chapters for each. A survey of the motley subject matter, such as letters from Queen Elena of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to the King of Portugal Dom

Manuel, assorted poems from artists such as Acuña, and varied selections of “African history,” immediately reveals how different Mármol’s Descripción is from the work of

Leo Africanus.

78 Mármol, Descripción, 17r & 152r. 79 Figueras gives a biographical history of Mármol and ends by positing a selection of Mármol’s text next to that of Africanus, but with no analysis of the two texts “Españoles en Africa en el Siglo XVI.” Crofton Black argues that Mármol’s text has anti-Islamic additions to Leo Africanus, but does not expand upon the differences, “Leo Africanus’ ‘Descrittione dell’Africa’ and Its Sixteenth-Century Translations,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002), 262-272. Pekka Masonen is the only scholar to focus upon why Mármol is not purely Africanus’ plagarist and demonstrates Mármol’s superior knowledge of the political history of Sudanic West Africa, The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages. Agustín G. de Amezuá, in his introduction to the Descripción facsimile, notes that Mármol’s explanation of his training and qualification is like that of a modern historian and that he should be appreciated as one of the greats, Introduction to Descripción general de Africa (1573-1599) by Luis del Mármol Carvajal (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1953) 26-30. 80 Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Descripcion general de Africa (1573-1599).

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Given the breadth and diversity of Mármol’s Descripción, I will limit my discussion to just a few points related to the literary genealogies of Leo Africanus, particularly to the adaptation of isnad. The closest equivalent to Leo Africanus’ revealing stories about the dutiful executioner and the amphibious bird occurs when

Mármol reveals the purpose and scope of his Descripción in his letter to King Phillip and the prologue. One immediately obvious difference from Leo Africanus is that

Mármol envisions his work gaining him patronage. In exchange for his years of military service for the crown, he seeks recompense or a position from King Philip.

Thus, whereas Africanus does not specify his imagined readership, Mármol’s first reader is his king. His writing is thus inherently politicized beyond Africanus’ advertised objectivity. He writes:

I engaged myself in this [work], so that Your Majesty will obtain the

service of many outstanding Catholic people, who, inspired by general

and true histories that push brave men’s souls towards the sweet prizes

of virtue and military discipline, with honorable desire to gain fame,

will carry out great deeds upon which Your Majesty always has his

eyes fixed. Which, to my judgment, will be just as pleasing as

beneficial for the conquest of the barbarous African towns, our cruel,

neighboring enemies, who always have been and are currently

bothersome to the subjects and vassals of your majesty or for dealing

with them in times of peace.

Tambien me mouio a ello entender que V.M. rescibira seruicio de que

auiendo como en ellos ay copia de gente tan Catholica y auentajada,

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aya assi mesmo quien con historias generales y verdaderas combide los

animos de los hombres valerosos a los dulces premios de la virtud y

disciplina military, con honrosa cudicia de ganar fama, executando los

grandes hechos en que siempre tiene.V.M. puestos los ojos. La qual a

mi juyzio no sera menos agradable que prouechosa, para la conquista

de los pueblos barbaros Affricanos tan vezinos como crueles enemigos

nuestros, que siempre fueron y son asaz molestos a los subditos y

vassallos de. V.M.o para la contratacion con ellos en tiempo de paz.81

(“Letter to Philip” in Descripción, no folio numbers)

Similar to Don Quixote’s famous speech regarding arms and letters before the captive’s tale, Mármol emphasizes the importance of his text inspiring action and inciting Catholic people to war against neighboring African Muslims.82 Though he does not mention financing in this letter, Mármol suggests that King Phillip’s support of “letras” (i.e. his Descripción) would be well placed since his text has the same goal as “historias generales y verdaderas,” which is to encourage Catholics to fight for

“honorable fame.” The ultimate point is that the information contained in the

Descripción would serve as a metaphorical weapon against cruel African “enemies.”

This noun is ironic, primarily because a large part of Mármol’s information comes directly out of Leo Africanus, particularly the second volume dealing with Barbary

(Mármol’s “pueblos bárbaros”). What would Africanus’ reaction have been to see that the next (unauthorized) author in his chain of transmission aimed for his text to serve

81 All translations are my own. As with the Cosmogrophia, I have changed all long “s” to short ones (Letter to Phillip, Descripción, no folio numbers). 82 El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, edited by Luis Andrés Murillo, 465-471.

75 as a political weapon against Islam and Africa? With his understanding of authorship as transmission and honest preservation, he likely would have disagreed that the end of “historias generales y verdaderas” was a military one. Such a distortion of purpose demonstrates the use to which Africanus could have put his text, had he chosen a side, as a collaborator with Italy. It also reveals something about the open-ended construction of Africanus’ literary chain that it can be adjusted and appropriated in this way.

The political aspect of the Descripción is ironic because, in copying vast selections of Africanus’ Descrizione, Mármol unwittingly relies upon the same kind of isnad authorial frameworks as did Leo Africanus. That is, he seems utterly unaware that he leans upon what might be called a Muslim literary genealogy (albeit altered) for textual authority. Like the hadith, a “genre” reliant upon isnad for transmission, each description of Africa—Italian, Spanish, and English—is created from what past authors have noted regarding Africa. Each is subsequently amended with eye-witness or reputable second-hand accounts. Ultimately, each description boasts a strict adherence to authenticity and truth, as announced by “historia verdadera.” In addition, similar to a hadith, the description is complicated by the very process in which it goes from speech to text. The remainder of this chapter will examine the implications of the re-contextualization of Africanus’ Descrizione in Mármol and Pory’s respective histories and what that means for genealogic construction (whether of the authors themselves or of the “nations” or religious groups to which they belong).

Mary Gaylord points out that historias verdaderas, or “true histories,” illuminate a divide between Iberian early modernists. As she has it, the scholars

76 focused on the Iberian Peninsula more frequently study poetic works, while those concerned with the American colonies tend to be more concerned with “historical” material. 83 This is a particularly salient point when applied to Mármol since his

Descripción is neither a poetic Old World text nor a historical New World text, but something geographically and generically altogether different. Another way of looking at the scholarly divide is to say that there is a segregation of the “text” and “context.”

(This is an issue that has reared its head under many titles within literary criticism;

“deconstructionism,” “reader-response” theory, and cultural studies come to mind.)

Africanus’ Descrizione highlights the complicated process of transmission where he discusses Pliny and the errors of those who informed the traveling historian.

For Africanus, the criteria for which speech becomes text is heavily reliant upon

“truth.” That is, unless Africanus judges the information to be true and worthy of recounting, it does not make its way into his work. As discussed earlier, Africanus’ apparent goal in writing the Descrizione is much more neutral than Mármol’s. While

Mármol intended for his Descripción to incite Catholics to war against Islam,

Africanus takes pride in his history’s objectivity. If anything, his work documents an author intent on surviving captivity and conversion between societies.

Although there are some minor changes at the textual level, Mármol’s participation in Africanus’ isnad is revealing on a more macroscopic level. In other words, although Mármol copies long sections of Africanus, he does not alter the text much beyond adding information. For example, in chapter one, “Que trata porque se llamo esta region Affrica, y como se llamo primero,” (sic) he begins just as Africanus

83 Mary Gaylord, “The True History of Early Modern Writing in Spanish: Some American Reflections,” Modern Language Quarterly 57 (1996): 213-226.

77 does, describing what Africa is, and why it is called by that name.84 To Africanus’ etymology of the Arabic faraca (“to divide” or “divided”) and of geographic division,

Mármol adds several curious elements. First, he begins his work by telling us that

Africa is the second of three parts of the world, “where the famous city of Carthage was edified” ‘donde fue edificada la famosa ciudad de Cartago’ and “Ptolemy called it

Libya from the name of another province in this region that is part of the desert confining Egypt” ‘Ptolomeo la llamo Libia del nõbre de otra prouincia desta regiõ que a la parte del desierto confina con Egipto’ (Descripción, 1r). The rest of the beginning follows Africanus closely, explaining the division etymology of Africa and the myth of the king “Melec Ifiriqui” as the first settler of Africa.

The prominence that Mármol gives to Carthage, as though the city itself could define Africa, serves to refashion the origins of African history. By emphasizing the

Greco-Roman heritage of the city, with its famous Queen Dido and her liaison with

Aeneas, he creates a bridge back to roots that antedate Arab origins in Africa and links his Descripción to ideologies of empire. In addition, the first writer on Africa that

Mármol mentions in his history is Ptolemy. Despite the fact that Africanus’ text is one of Mármol’s major sources, providing the format for the first few chapters (and many others in the Descripción), Africanus’ name appears only seventeen folios later, in order to give an opinion regarding the Niger river. Though hardly citing Africanus,

Mármol mentions countless “Geógrafos Affricanos” and Arabic writers as sources throughout his work, sometimes identically written as if he had taken them directly

84 I have not modernized the Descripción to adjust for missing accents or spelling.

78 from Africanus.85 The result of Mármol’s strategy is to sidestep Africanus’ influence, attempting to efface his influence altogether. Mármol does this by generally citing

“African geographers” where Africanus is concerned, directly naming Africanus’ own

Arab sources, and also by unwaveringly returning to Ptolemy as a reference point throughout his work. This authorial maneuver accomplishes a task similar to what

Africanus had set out to do. That is, Mármol presents himself as an author contributing the most novel and accurate information on Africa to what is already known. By including “what Ptolemy knew” alongside his own findings, he appears to be the heir to a classical literary genealogy of writers on Africa while barely acknowledging

Africanus.

However, Mármol’s text, unlike Pory’s, is not a translation of the Descrizione.

The entire second book contains content unmentioned by Africanus, from the origins of Islam (beginning with birth and life of the Prophet Mohammad) to the Battle of

Lepanto of 1571, which occurred forty-five years after Africanus finished writing his work. Mármol’s personal background as an Old Christian Granadan fighting for the

“Spanish” crown who also wrote a history of the “rebellion and punishment” of the moriscos should be considered. The process of absorbing Africanus’ text into a new

Castilian one, occurs within this new context and background. In studying the adaptation of Africanus in Mármol, one should consider the larger implications of such re-appropriation.

85 See note 290 where Masonen compares Mármol’s description of Marrakesh with that of Leo’s “Gran Cittá di Marocco” to show how Mármol writes, “Ybny Alraquiq” and “Abdul Malic choronista de Marruecos,” The Negroland Revisited, 220. On the other hand, based upon Mármol’s thorough understanding of North African history, it appears that he may have been better acquainted with some Arabic works, such as Ibn Kaldun’s Kitab al-‘ibar, than Africanus.

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The chronology of Mármol’s Descripción (570-1571 AD) is one important aspect of the context into which Leo Africanus’ text is placed. Whereas Africanus never specifies a time frame for his description of Africa, Mármol gives his “historia” a teleological meaning by commencing with the birth of Mohammad and culminating with the Battle of Lepanto. How does a seemingly neutral description of Barbary, for example,—sometime identical in translation—change in meaning when re- contextualized thus in Mármol? If the military purpose of Mármol’s Descripción were not flagrantly clear from his prefatory material, then the historical context of his description of Africa should be. First of all, the re-contextualization indicates that

Mármol considers Africa to be Muslim, and thus the entire continent as enemy territory. Although clearly related to the history of Africa, the prominent placement of the incipient stages of Islam at the beginning of his longest book (the second) is awkward. For example, what would a history of Europe begin with for Mármol? The birth of Christ? I propose that a major goal of Mármol’s text, one that is in service of his stated bellicose aim, is to construct a history of Africa that is cast as another reconquista, not unlike that of the Kingdom of Granada, but with the authority of

Africanus’ literary system of transmission. That is, in the previous book, he emphasizes the “European” author Ptolemy over Africanus and also the presence of

Europeans ancestors (Carthaginians) in Africa in order to paint a picture of the Arabo-

Islamic presence in Africa as a temporary takeover that necessitates a re-conquest and reclamation for European-Christians (specifically King Phillip’s Catholic Kingdom).

The re-conquest, however, occurs not on the geographical continent of Africa, but in the Gulf of Patras, off of Western Greece—Lepanto. In the “Prologue to the

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Reader,” Mármol summarizes the coming of Mohammad, explaining how the Prophet obtained conformity amongst the Arab peoples. Mármol insists that Mohammad made the Arab people love him, honor him like a king, and venerate him like a saint by feigning holiness, permitted illicit behavior, and gave “free rein to all manner of vices.” And thus Arabo-Islamic peoples, “being initially weak and feeble, came to make themselves the most powerful in the world, and conquered innumerable

Provinces in the Roman Empire” ‘Y siendo primero debiles y flacos, vinieron a hazerse los mas podersos del mundo, y conquistaron innumberables Prouincias del imperio Romano’ (Descripción, verso of second folio of prólogo). However, because of schisms and discord amongst the Arab successors of Mohammad,

the Turks came to power, who insolently reign this day. For which we

place hope in divine providence that they be quickly broken up, by

means of agreement and union of the Christian princes who joined

together in the Holy League, and that in our time we will see the

Catholic name reinstated to the cities of Jerusalem, Constantinople, and

all of Greece, with the freedom of the miserable Greeks, who live in

constant sorrow and subjection.

Y vino a poder de los Turcos que tan insolentemente reyná el dia de oy.

El qual esperamos en la diuina prouidencia que a de ser breuemente

confundido, mediante la cõformidad y vnion delos principes

Christianos que se han confederado en esta sancta liga, y que en

nuestros dias emos de ver restituidas al nõbre Catholico las ciudades de

Ierusalem, Constantinopla, y toda la Grecia, con la libertad de los

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miserables Griegos, que viuen en continuo lloro y seruid˜ubre.

(Descripción, verso of second page of prólogo).

Given that the major Arab weakness (documented in his historia, he adds) is dissension and disunity, Mármol suggests that Spanish and Holy League policy must focus henceforth upon conformity to combat the Turks. Mármol explains that cities such as Jerusalem, Constantinople, and all of Greece must be “reinstated” ‘restituidas’ to the Catholic name.86 Like the verb “reconquer,” restituidas makes clear that he considers these places to be historically Catholic territories that must be returned to that religion after unjust takeovers by Islamic peoples, casting the Roman territories as

Catholic. Based upon the content of his history, as well as his own declarations in the

Letter to Philip and the Prologue, Mármol’s Descripción de Affrica could just as easily be described as a history of Islamic takeover. This is the context into which Africanus’ quotations are received—a rhetoric of re-conquest. Thus information about the mountains, rivers, and peoples of Africa all now serve as reconnaissance for potential missions and reconquista in Africa and against Islam generally. Finally, Africa is not even mentioned despite its being the subject of the history (Jerusalem is close). This can be interpreted as Mármol’s implicit suggestion that understanding and reconquest of Africa lead to ultimate defeat of Islam in the rest of the known world.

Ironically, in some ways Mármol frames “Africa” the way that Africa of the

Arab cosmographers was considered: an organization of Islamic lands, rather than a geographical place or continent. “Africa,” or what might be better called “the threat of

86 Note that in the case of Constantinople Mármol avoids mentioning that it was not just the 1453 sack/conquest of Constantinople by the Muslim Turks, but also Orthodox Christianity of centuries that would have to be overcome in order to “reinstate” Catholicism.

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Islam,” extends across the continent, to the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean, and at times into Southern Iberia. One wonders if this technique failed in Mármol’s search for patronage, however, since he had to finance his Segunda Parte himself. That is, perhaps after the morisco “fifth column” disappeared with the quelling of their rebellion, and after the triumphant Battle of Lepanto, there was less or no need for such militant propaganda against the Turks and Barbary coast.87 And, in addition,

Spain’s empire was over extended with colonial conquest in the Americas. While

Africanus’ Africa was sometimes multivalent, Mármol’s is an “Africa” defined for

Spain, complete with the glorious accomplishments of Don Juan de Austria.

I conclude by showing how Mármol theorized his text being used in the future, based upon an anecdote he gives concerning Portugal’s Prince Henrique, the

Navigator. Mármol writes that Henrique, son of King João I, was so fascinated by astrology and cosmography that he used works on Africa in order to further explore the continent (Descripción, 45v). After he had fought against the Muslims of Ceuta in

1419, he decided to send ships along the coast of Africa in order to find a route to the

East Indies. The prince studied the explorations of Menelaus, of Hannon in both

Pomponius Mela and in Pliny, and of Neco and Xerxes in Herodotus (Descripción,

45v-46r). Mármol adds that,

he also would read in Strabo about Caesar, the son of Augustus, that in

the Arabian sea they found pieces of Spanish ships that a storm had

thrown on that coast, and the same Strabo, Pliny, Cornelius Nepos, and

87 The “fifth column” refers to the supposed internal support of the moriscos for the Ottoman Turks should there be an invasion of Spain by sea. See Andrew Hess, “The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain,” American Historical Review 74 (1968): 1-25.

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Pomponius Mela wrote about Eudoxus regarding these ships: The

Prince read these testimonies and many others, and from the daily news

the he received from useful Africans about things in Africa, he resolved

to embark upon this discovery which had been lost from men’s

memories.

También leeria en Estrabon como estando Cesar hijo de Augusto enel

mar de Arabia se hallaron pedaços de naos Españoles que la tormenta

avia echado en aquella costa, y lo que el mesmo Estrabomn, Plinio, y

Cornelio Nepos, y Pomponio Mela, escrivieron de Eudoxo cerca deftas

nauegaciones: con los quales testimonios y otros muchos que el Infante

auria leydo, y por muchas relaciones que cada dia ternia de Affricanos

practicos en las cosas de Affrica se resolvio de hazer este

descubrimiento que dela memoria de los hombres era ya perdido.

(Descripción, 46r)

Prince Henrique not only takes inspiration from past texts on Africa, but political counsel. They urge him to action. Although Mármol recounts a story of Portuguese exploration in Africa, he notes that the ship fragments found in the Arabian sea were

“pieces of Spanish ships” ‘pedaços de naos Españoles’ (Descripción, 46r). As with

Mármol’s prominent placement of Carthage and his urging that “Catholic” cities like

Jerusalem be reclaimed, such narrative details are crucial for depicting an Africa already inhabited by Spain since antiquity. The prince’s decision is not merely about recovering a “lost” memory, but about “reinstating” Africa to rightful Iberian

84 ownership and rule.88 As with Africanus’ story regarding Pliny and his errors, the anecdote of Prince Henrique from over a century earlier reveals how Mármol sees his

Descripción being used by future readers as well. He constructs a “lost” ‘perdido’

Africa that must necessarily be regained. That is, since his work too will join this prestigious group of European authors, he hopes that it will spur further discovery and, after the Battle of Lepanto, continued military success against Islam generally.

The irony of such a sweeping goal, of course, comes back to Africanus and his origins. Like Mármol, Africanus was born in Granada. It is probable that some of his relatives were the very people about whom Mármol would write in Historia del rebelión y castigo de los moriscos. Thus, it is not surprising that Mármol makes little mention of Africanus since such a source would be an embarrassing stain upon his record. However, different than Pliny’s “stains” (or “piss”) upon Africanus’

Descrizione—an issue of misinformation—Mármol is concerned with stains of identity, of the author who signed his name in the colophon of the Cosmogrophia as

“Joan Lione Granatino,” the “Granadan.” I propose this is why, despite the fact that

Mármol employs the same kind of isnad as did Africanus, he prefers to bypass

Africanus and only recount his sources. Africanus’ open-ended isnad, one that does

88 Peter Russell’s life of Prince Henrique avoids reducing Henry’s obsession with crusading in Morocco to a quest for economic gain. Rather, he demonstrates that in material terms, Portugal’s (and Henrique’s) advantage overwhelmingly lay in maintaining peaceful relations with Morocco. How then, does he explain the prince’s relentless quest for material gain and opportunism and cynicism in his relations with his family and popes? Russell’s solution is to write of two Henries, the crusader and the level-headed entrepreneur-administrator, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A Life. In his discussion of religious warfare, Norman Housley maps onto this analysis to describe what he calls the “‘Henry the Navigator syndrome:’ a mixture of what seem to be irreconcilable ways of viewing and dealing with the enemy,” Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 16.

85 not require (and is even hindered by) strict recounting of sources can be re- appropriated such that Africanus can even be written out of it. The purpose of such literary transmission focuses now upon the readers, not the authors. The paramount goal becomes the “truth” that is passed on and that is reliant upon source texts.

Whether or not Mármol was familiar with isnad, he copies Africanus’ method of generating various structures of authority for his Castilian-reading public, but with a darker, militant goal that always aims to be at Spain’s service.

Despite the scanty autobiographical information regarding Mármol, there is one way in which the Descripción resembles Africanus’ Descrizione as a performance of identity. In the sixteenth century, when a captive returned from “infidel” lands to

Spain, he went directly to the Inquisition to preemptively prove he had not become a renegade to Catholicism by converting to Islam. For example, in Don Quijote, the first stop that the renegade in the Captive’s Tale makes upon his return to Spain is the

Inquisition. A captive was presumed guilty of apostasy until he proved otherwise.89

The captive presented an información, a detailed account of what he did, where he went, and usually containing signatures from trustworthy sources vouching for his faithfulness and good deeds he did for fellow Christians. Although some believe that

Mármol would have written his own información—given his peregrination of twenty- two years—to this day none has been found. However, Mármol’s Descripción still fulfills that purpose. My final suggestion is that, like an información, Mármol’s history on Africa details the places he claims to have been and the work is a product of the time spent researching Africa, all in the name of his king and country. Whereas

89 For more examples of English renegade returns see Daniel Vitkus, ed. Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption (New York: Colombia University Press, 2001).

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Africanus has to write in the land of his captors, Mármol returns, but still must absolve himself somehow. Similar to Africanus’ amphibious bird story, Mármol too is offering his anti-Islamic “words as payment” for potential slander and accusations of being a renegado.

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Ch 2. Romance and Empire: Reclaiming Genealogies in Orlando furioso and The

Faerie Queene

In his well-known “Letter to Raleigh,” Edmund Spenser briefly addresses a similar problem to what both Leo Africanus and Mármol Carvajal faced in their respective works on Africa. When enumerating the knights of the first three books and their allegorical attributes, he writes,

the Methode of a Poet historical is not such, as of an Historiographer.

For an Historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were

donne, accounting as well the times as the actions, but a Poet thrusteth

into the middest, euen where it most concerneth him, and there

recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and diuining of thinges to come,

maketh a pleasing Analysis of all. (Spenser 717)90

Like Africanus and Mármol, Spenser acknowledges differences in the roles of a poet and a historiographer, or what we might call a historian today. On the surface it appears that, for Spenser, the distinguishing factor between the two is the order in which each author narrates events. A historiographer must recount “affayres” in chronological order. A poet, on the other hand, begins his narration in the middle— even if those times “concerneth him”—then past events, and finally, predicts

(“divines”) the future. With “concerneth” he appears to suggest that the middle of the story related by the poet may even be the times in which the poet currently lives.

However, Spenser believes that the task of a “Poet historical” is much more than merely recounting an epic story that begins “in media res.” As in Sidney’s “Defence of

90 All quotations from the Faerie Queene will be cited as in Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Ed. A.C. Hamilton (New York: Longman, 2001).

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Poetry,” where he too describes the obligations of a poet as vatic and prophetic, the poet must “divine” the future in a kind of prognostication-turned-prolepsis, as well as offer a “pleasing Analysis of all.” In the Oxford English Dictionary the verb “divine” at this time varies in meaning from “to make out or interpret by supernatural or magical insight” and “to interpret and explain” to “to conjecture, guess.”91 Spenser seems to say that the epic poet is not merely recording, but also creating history by both interpreting and predicting it. For Spenser, perhaps that is the key difference between “historiographers” like Africanus or Mármol and a “poet Historical” like himself. If he writes it, this passage suggests, it will come to pass. With historical poetry, the poet has the opportunity to not only recreate the past, but to construct history and genealogies, essentially creating a future as well.

Spenser is not unique in assuming the role of vatic poet goes hand in hand with that of an epic poet. Indeed, beginning with book six of the Aeneid, where Anchises reveals his son Aeneas’ progeny, there is a model for a curious component of epic that

I call the “genealogical pageant.” Anchises tells of the coming of Caesar Augustus:

this is the man, this one,

Of whom so often you have heard the promise,

Caesar Augustus, son of the deified,

Who shall bring once again an Age of Gold

To Latium, to the land where Saturn reigned

In early times. He will extend his power

Beyond the Garamants and Indians,

91 “Divine,” Defs. 1-3, Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1989.

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Over far territories north and south

[……………………………………]

The truth is, even Alcidës

Never traversed so much of earth. (187-8)92

As with this Virgilian review of Roman history, in the genealogical pageant, epic authors name ancient heroes as originators of the lineage of “present” heroes in the text who then culminate in the leader and/or patron of the historical present (i.e. the

“future” in the text). In this passage, Anchises foretells the “destiny” of Aeneas’ people (186), dedicating many versus to describing their descendents, the pinnacle of whom is Virgil’s patron, Caesar Augustus (followed immediately by Numa). Thus,

Virgil constructs his patron’s genealogy in such a way that not only is Augustus legal heir to Julius Caesar, but also genetically (and almost messianically) linked to the

Trojan hero. In addition, the genealogical pageant provides the hero with the foreknowledge that his quest is not in vain. He or she pursues for his or her posterity.

However, in Anchises’ prognostication there is a bizarre collision of times.

Aeneas is supposedly the first Trojan descendent to colonize Alba Longa, but

Anchises informs his son that Augustus will “bring once again an Age of Gold/ To

Latium, to the land where Saturn reigned/ In early times.” It is unclear whether the

Golden Age occurred prior to Aeneas’ colonization of Latium (that is, in the unspecified “early times” of Saturn’s reign) or in the years immediately antedating

Caesar Augustus’ reign. As we shall see, for many early modern authors, Augustus’ reign was the model of the “Age of Gold” and he the template for an idealized leader.

92 Virgil, The Aeneid, Trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990).

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Therefore, the nostalgia that Virgil evokes for a renewal of an even anterior moment is surprising. Minimally, this portion of the genealogical pageant demonstrates that even

Virgil, the model, manipulates “history” and his role as a vatic poet in order to construct the events and past of his patron and patria such that they appear as a restoration.

As David Quint has written with regard to epic, tied to such prophetic moments is not merely the foundation of dynasty, but importantly, the foundation of entire peoples and nations—empire, as he puts it.93 I aim to demonstrate that the primary function of genealogical construction in Ariosto and Spenser is to create the illusion of imperial power in a past that palimpsests over their respective contemporary times. Such construction aims to create “empire” for Charlemagne’s

Romano-Christian forces that, Ariosto suggests, will be or is presently mirrored in the present by an idealized Romano-Christian West that does not actually exist. In the case of Spenser’s romance, Britain is arguably even more marginally considered an

“empire” than Italy, both “then” and “now.” Though he follows Ariosto in his ample use of a genealogical pageant, the allegory of the poem refracts any easy palimpsests of past upon present both for individual lineages and also for Britain as a whole.

Consanguineous and Heroic Genealogies in Orlando Furioso

Ariosto and Spenser both describe various types of what I call “genealogies” in their poems. Beginning with actual consanguineous genealogies, both authors recount detailed family trees that trace the bloodlines of their patrons. However, there is ample

93 David Quint, Epic and Empire.

91 room for expansion and fabrication as both authors include ancestors from imaginary and real heroes of such a distant past that they cannot be disproved, however seemingly infeasible. In his work on forged literary genealogies in early modern

England, Raphael Falco suggests an influence for such fabricated bloodlines.94

Offering the New Testament biblical precedent for Jesus Christ’s roots, he writes,

“The authority of the Biblical model would have served aspiring noblemen well. That royal blood ran, unheralded for years, in the veins of the lowly carpenter carried a message of genealogical hope—as well as a hope of salvation—to the pedigree- conscious” (Falco 9). Indeed in The Crisis of the Aristocracy, Lawrence Stone explains that “genuine genealogy was cultivated by the older gentry to reassure themselves of their innate superiority over the upstarts; bogus genealogy was cultivated by the new gentry in an effort to clothe their social nakedness, and by the old gentry in the internal jockeying for position in the ancestral pecking order” (Stone

23).95 For this reason, Tudor heralds produced countless rolls tracing the ancestry of the nobility back to the Norman conquerors, to the Romans, and finally to the Trojans

(Stone 23). In the Faerie Queene, Spenser plays just such a heraldic role for his queen, particularly in the House of Alma where Guyon and Arthur read of ancestors from centuries past. However, Britain’s writers were by no means the first to create such imagined genealogies for their nobility.

In Orlando furioso, Ariosto’s treatment of consanguineous genealogies is a model for Spenser’s romance several decades later. In some ways, both poems are

94 Raphael Falco, Conceived Presences: Literary Genealogy in Renaissance England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994). 95 Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

92 based upon the heroes’ quests to uncover their roots. Much as Falco suggests regarding the precedent of Jesus Christ, Arthur and Ruggiero discover hidden nobility in their own genealogies. However, Ariosto’s treatment of his patron’s times differs somewhat from Spenser’s, who plays it much safer by typically recounting the

“future” of Britain that has already come to pass. In fact, in attempting to “diuine of things to come,”—prognosticating in Ariosto’s case—Ariosto better abides by

Spenser’s later statement in the letter to Ralegh than does the British author himself.96

Ludovico Ariosto spent most of his adult life in service of the Ferrarese ducal d’Este family (“Estensi”), particularly Cardinal Hippolytus d’Este and his brother Duke

Alfonso. As with Virgil, Ariosto employs the genealogical pageant as a means of flattery. However, as I noted above, the political atmosphere surrounding Ariosto and the importance and power of his patron family were notably different than that of

Virgil. Whereas Virgil was commissioned to write the Aeneid by Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man of the Roman Empire, Ariosto was writing for an important, but by no means all-powerful family. In addition, Italy had been invaded countless times during his lifetime, with Rome being sacked in 1527 by the forces of Charles V.97 All

Italian factions constantly feared takeover by their Ottoman Turkish neighbors to the east who had taken over Constantinople in 1453 and went as far as Vienna in the late sixteenth century.98 Ariosto’s Italy and Ariosto’s Estensi could in no way claim to be

96 On prophecy in Orlando furioso see Eric MacPhail, “Ariosto and the Prophetic Moment,” MLN 116 (2001) 30-53. 97 For a general view of religious warfare and the European Christian Commonwealth between 1436-1536 see Norman Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536, 62-98. 98 For a discussion of the Ottoman Empire in this period and also the Hapsburg-Valois rivalry see Thomas F. Arnold, Renaissance at War (London: Cassell, 2001) 108-171. See also

93 part of an “empire” as indicated by “Roman Empire” or “Turkish Empire” at that point. For these reasons, Ariosto manipulates genealogies in Orlando furioso, creating the illusion of imperial power for both his heroes of the “past” and thus also for his patrons and his Italy.

One of the most important unifying threads of the plot of Orlando furioso is

Ruggiero and Bradamante’s destiny together. In these heroes, Ariosto constructs actual consanguineous genealogies for the benefit of his patrons. Ruggiero is one of the primary knights fighting for the “Pagan” or “Saracen” forces—an ill-defined group that includes both Muslims and atheists alike—while Bradamante is a female warrior fighting for the Christian side. Amidst minor skirmishes between individual knights and triangulated love scenes, Bradamante relentlessly pursues her beloved Ruggiero.

Their quest to locate one another and subsequently marry is one of the driving forces of the poem as a result of multiple genealogical pageants staged by Ariosto. Ariosto has not one, but several of these genealogical pageants in the form of words, sculpture, spirits literally parading in front of Bradamante, and murals in a hidden castle

(exemplifying the variety of outstanding arts flourishing in Italy in the early sixteenth century). The first pageant, Melissa (and Merlin’s) revelation, occurs as spirits conjured for Bradamante’s secret viewing in a cave. It begins with,

See this first one, who resembles you in his handsome features and

serene expression. He is to be the head of your family in Italy,

conceived in you by Ruggiero’s seed. I am expecting to see the earth

Caroline Finkel, Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923 and Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe.

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dyed red by his hand with Pontieri blood, and the vengeance he shall

wreak upon those who by foul treachery shall slay his father./ He shall

despoil Desiderio, King of the Lombards, and in reward, he shall

receive from the Empire the fine domains of Este and Calaon.99

(Waldman 23)

Vedi quel primo che ti rassimiglia

ne’ bei sembianti e nel giocondo aspetto:

capo in Italia fia di tua famiglia,

del seme di Ruggiero in te concetto.

Veder del sangue di Pontier vermiglia

per mano di costui la terra aspetto,

e vendicato il tradimento e il torto

contra quei che gli avranno il padre morto.

Per opra di costui sarà deserto

il re de’ Longobardi Desiderio:

d’Este e di Calaon per questo metro

il bel domino avrà dal sommo Imperio.100 (3.24-25)

The genealogical pageant ends approximately forty stanze later with Ariosto’s contemporary Estensi patrons:

See next the two Sigismondi, and here, Alfonso’s five beloved sons—

not mountains nor seas shall be able to prevent their renown from

99 English quotations will be based upon the following translation: Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, Ed. Guido Waldman, 1974, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983). 100 Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, Ed. Lanfranco Caretti, (Torino: Einaudi, 1966 & 1992).

95 spreading throughout the world. One is Ercole II, wed to the daughter of the king of France this other (to give you a complete account) is

Hippolytus, who shall shine in his posterity with no less radiance than his uncle./ The third is Francesco the other two are both called Alfonso.

But, as I said before, were I to show you every one of your descendants whose virtues shall lend such glory to their tribe, lights and darkness would have to succeed each other many times before I were finished.

Now, with your permission, it is time that I dismiss the spirits and say no more. (Waldman 27)

Vedi poi l’uno e l’altro Sigismondo. vedi d’Alfonso i cinque figli cari, alla cui fama ostar, che di sé il mondo non empia, i monti non potran né i mari: gener del re di Francia, Ercol secondo

è l’un; quest’altro (acciò tutti gl’impari)

Ippolito è, che non con minor raggio

Che ‘l zio, risplenderà nel suo lignaggio;

Francesco, il terzo; Alfonsi gli altri dui ambi son detti, Or, come io dissi prima, s’ho da mostrarti ogni tuo ramo, il cui valor la stirpe sua tanto sublima, bisognerà che si rischiari e abbui piú volte prima il ciel, ch’io te li esprima:

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e sarà tempo ormai, quando ti piaccia,

ch’io dia licenzia all’ombre, e ch’io mi taccia. (3.63-64)

Such passages strike the reader more like a bombastic catalogue rather than prophetic poetry. For Ariosto, the genealogical pageant serves a dual purpose. It is both a function of the narrative—spurring Bradamante to pursue her love for Ruggiero—and also a function of patronage, lauding the ducal Estensi family who will be the culmination of the heroes’ lineage.

Bradamante belongs to a noble family whose parents intend to marry her to

Emperor Constantine’s son Leone, objecting to Ruggiero’s seemingly humble origins.

His inborn cortesia and his Trojan bloodlines (whether unknown or unconvincing) apparently do not qualify him to be her husband. Throughout the poem, Ariosto glosses over what must have been an alarming aspect, however, for his patrons—

Ruggiero’s Islamic faith. Galaciella, Ruggiero’s (and his twin sister Marfisa’s) mother, was an African Muslim who converted to Christianity for the sake of her husband.

How would the potential genealogical stain of Islam have resonated with the Estensi?

Would it have seemed exotic, and thus perhaps flattering, or would such a statement have concerned them? Before addressing these questions, I will discuss Ariosto’s treatment of the second fundamental type of “genealogy” in Orlando furioso: heroic genealogies.

Though Ruggiero is not royalty compared with Bradamante’s family, Ariosto makes the grandiose claim that Ruggiero and his twin Marfisa are direct descendents of Hector of Troy:

Ruggiero incominciò, che da’ Troiani

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per la linea d’Ettore erano scesi;

che poi che Astïanatte de le mani

campò d’Ulisse e da li aguati tesi,

avendo un de’ fanciulli coetani

per lui lasciato, uscí di quei paesi;

e dopo un lungo errar per la marina,

venne in Sicilia e dominò Messina. (36.70)

Ruggiero set about explaining to her their descent from the Trojans by

Hector’s line; how Hector saved Astyanax from Ulysses’ hands and the

besetting snares, leaving in his place one of his children of similar age, and

escaped from Troy’ and how, after a long sea-voyage, he arrived in Sicily and

ruled over Messina. (Waldman 439)

Hector serves as the link between Virgil (and Homer) and Ariosto’s hero, patron, and his own poem. In some ways Orlando furioso actually bests Virgil’s poem and the

Julian dynasty by bypassing Aeneas completely, tracing Ruggiero’s roots directly to the most famous hero of Homer’s Iliad, and the progenitor of the Trojans. Sicily, the endlessly disputed island (having passed between Arab, Italian, and Norman hands various times), was nevertheless considered part of the Italian peninsula since before

Roman times. Hector’s son, Astynax’s separate (or possibly tandem) colonization of

Italy, therefore traces another Trojan genealogy that connects Ruggiero (and the

Estensi) with Trojan royalty. According to Homer, Hector was the epitome of courage, strength, and wisdom. Only the god-favored Achilles, in his rage, succeeds in finally killing him, dragging his mutilated corpse around the walls of Troy.

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In Orlando furioso, there are two prestigious “ancestors” of the knights. The first, and most valued ancestor is Hector. His arms—particularly his sword Durindana, his helmet, and breastplate— are sought out, won, or stolen by countless knights. In some ways, the possession of another knight’s arms represents merely the spoils of war. One knight overthrows another and the prize is the fallen knight’s helmet, sword, horse, etc. In other ways, however, the arms and armor of heroes bring a legacy and genealogy of their own. To own and wear or use them equates participation in

Hector’s “heroic genealogy” as a warrior, likening that knight to its original owner in a similar relationship as a son to a father or grandfather. It is significant also that Ariosto does not trace the warrior genealogies through mere clothing or token jewelry, for example. The genealogies traced through arms and armor always suggests bellicose and imperial triumph over other nations and groups. Thus, the warrior genealogy too implies empire. Gülru Necipoglu illustrates this type of emulation first in the coronation crown of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and then in the four royal crowns of Ottoman Süleyman the Magnificent.101 The historian Celalzade, complained that after being invested with a jeweled crown, Charles V began to “claim the title of

Caesar” ‘Çesar.’ Süleyman refused to recognize this ambitious title in his official correspondence, instead addressing his rival simply as “King of Spain”( Necipoglu

411). Necipoglu writes that

Süleyman’s composite crown—with its combined elements from the

pope’s tiara, the emperor’s mitre-crown, and Hapsburg parade helmets

with Islamic motifs—[can be read as] an intelligible statement of

101 See Gülru Necipoglu, “Süleyman the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry,” 401-427.

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Ottoman imperial claims. This idiosyncratic helmet disputed both the

Holy Roman emperor’s title of Caesar and the sanctioning power of the

pope through its conspicuous departure from the established form of

the papal tiara (413).

Perhaps taking cue from this historical context, Ariosto describes similar power disputations between knights such as Orlando, Mandricardo, and Ruggiero, just to name a few who fight over Hector’s supposed possessions. Arms are invested with titular and imperial power that always points back to a famous real or idealized progenitor.

However, it is Ruggiero who claims to be related to Hector also by blood, thus wearing the white eagle upon azure background as his emblem. The important point is that—in Virgil’s version of the events—the tragedy of Troy is foretold by the gods as mandatory for the foundation of Italy and, more importantly, the Roman Empire. In other words, to claim Trojan blood is to participate in one of the first and most important founding bloodlines of Italy, and thus, according to Roman heritage, of

Europe too. When the sorceress Melissa shows Bradamante her destiny in Merlin’s cave, she says that:

L’antiquo sangue che venne da Troia,

per li duo miglior rivi in te commisto,

produrrà l’ornamento, il fior, la gioa

d’ogni lignaggio ch’abbi il sol mai visto

tra l’Indo e ‘l Tago e ‘l Nilo e la Danoia,

tra quanto è ‘n mezzo Antartico e Calisto.

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Ne la progenie tua con sommi onori saran marchesi, duci e imperatori.

I capitani e i cavalier robusti quindi usciran, che col ferro e col senno ricuperar tutti gli onor vetusti de l’arme invitte alla sua Italia denno.

Quindi terran lo scettro i signor giusti, che, come il savio Augusto e Numa fenno, sotto il genigno e buon governo loro ritorneran la prima età de l’oro.

Acciò dunque il voler del ciel si metta in effetto per te, che di Ruggiero t’ha per moglier fin da principio eletta, segue animosamente il tuo sentiero; che cosa non sarà che s’intrometta da poterti turbar questo pensiero.

(3:17-19)

The blood deriving from ancient Troy, in its two most perfect streams, is to be blended in you to produce the ornament, the flower, the jewel of all dynasties that the sun has ever seen ‘twist the Indus, Tagus,

Danube, and Nile, ‘twist all that lies between the Antarctic and the

Bear. Marquises, dukes, and emperors will be in high honor among your posterity./ From you shall spring the captains and dauntless

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knights who, by their sword and wits, are to reclaim for Italy all the

former honors of unvanquished arms. From you the just rulers will hold

their scepters, under whose mild and virtuous government, as under

wise Augustus and Numa, the Golden Age will once again relive./ To

give effect, therefore, to Heaven’s will, which has from all time

appointed you to be Ruggiero’s wife, pursue your way with courage—

for nothing shall intervene to upset this decree. (Waldman 22)

A contemporary sketch of what lies between the Indus, Tagus, Danube, and the

Nile rivers would be what today is called Western Europe. From West to East, this territory spans from the Iberian peninsula’s Tagus river to Germany where the Danube runs south-east to Romania. Below the Mediterranean Sea, the area is bordered by the

Nile and to the East in modern-day Pakistan by the Indus river. Melissa tells

Bradamante that she must pursue becoming Ruggiero’s wife in order that their progeny reclaim a “Golden Age” for Italy (not France) like the one that Anchises prophesized would occur during Augustus’ and Numa’s government. Like Virgil before him, Ariosto’s description of future “reclamation” presents several problems.

First, it does not include Britain, which, given the background of the Arthurian cycles in Ariosto, figures so importantly in other knights’ lineages. Second, in the south, this promise land extends far to the east of what the Roman empire ever acquired by the time of Caesar Augustus’ death. Thus, the prediction of Bradamante’s kin “reclaiming

Italy” to revive another “Golden Age” would be more than just a revival or renascence, but a vast eastward expansion of the empire. Inclusion of the Indus river indicates a kind of wish-fulfillment on the part of Ariosto for the contemporary rulers

102 to not only “take back” territories lost to the Ottoman Turks, but also extend that

Christian realm even further. Through Ruggiero, the Estensi, rulers over merely

Ferrara and its surroundings, have thus been projected to have power over a mythical, global “Europe.”

The second important heroic genealogy, from which Rodomonte traces his origins, begins with Nimrod (“Nembroto”) of Babel. Ariosto writes:

Dove nel caso disperato e rio

gli altri fan voti, egli bestemmia Dio.

Armato era d’un forte e duro &usbergo,

che fu di drago una scagliosa pelle.

Di questo già si cinse il petto e ‘l tergo

quello avol suo ch’edificò Babelle,

e si pensò cacciar de l’aureo albergo,

e tôrre a Dio il governo de le stelle:

l’elmo e lo scudo fece far perfetto,

e il brando insieme; e solo a questo effetto.

Rodomonte non già men di Nembrotte

indomito, superbo e furibondo,

che d’ire al ciel non tarderebbe a notte

quando la strada si trovasse al mondo.

(14:117- 9)

While the rest sent prayers up to the Almighty, he [Rodomonte] sent up

curses./ He was armed with a tough, durable breastplate made from the

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scaly hide of a dragon. It once clad the chest and back of Nimrod, his

ancestor who built the tower of Babel, thinking to hurl God out of His

golden abode and wrest from Him the government of the stars. To this

end he had his helmet and shield fashioned to perfection, as also his

sword./ Rodomont was every whit as dauntless, proud and rabid as

Nimrod, and if there were a path up to Heaven, he would not have

waited for nightfall before taking it.(151).

Rodomonte does not prize Hector’s armor, but rather that of his purported ancestor

Nimrod. Ariosto even dramatizes the morphing of Rodomonte’s body into a pseudo- dragon himself as he burns and razes Paris. (Indeed, John Milton seems to model his proud, reptilian Satan in Paradise Lost upon Ariosto’s Rodomonte.) Ariosto constructs the pagan archnemesis Rodomonte’s genealogy to represent an opposite “Eastern” bloodline that is the counterpart to Hector’s.

Unlike Hector, Nimrod is a biblical hero. He was known as “the first on earth to become a mighty hunter” and “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen 10.9-

10.10).102 In addition, Nimrod and his descendents’ were known as colonizers of territory in the east, which is suggestive of why he was chosen as Rodomonte’s primary ancestor.103 Traditional associations of Nimrod with the tower of Babel, however do not derive from the Bible. It appears as though Nimrod’s descendents— not Nimrod—create the tower, prohibitively speaking only one language, with the aim that they not be dispersed and lost throughout the earth. As punishment, God scatters

102 The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Michael D. Coogan, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 103 “The territory in which they lived extended from Mesha in the direction of Sephar, the hill country of the east,” Gen 10.30, The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

104 the people of Babel and “confuses the language of all the earth” (Gen 11.9). Far from an anti-Christian or Islamic “Eastern” hero, Nimrod is not even God’s enemy in the

Bible. Nevertheless, his early modern reputation as the supreme atheist against the

Christian god results in his serving as exemplar for Rodomonte, the Muslim king of

Sarza and Algiers. Following this, it is notable that the anti-Christian forces appear to be united by the mere fact that they are opposed to Charlemagne and Christianity.

They are a motley crew indiscriminately identified as Saracens, Mohammedans, pagans, Africans, Muslims, and Spaniards, along with a few outliers from Asia

(Sacripante, Gradasso, and Mandricardo from Circassia, Sericana, and Tartary respectively). There is a striking lack of unification—geographical or religious— behind the enemies of Charlemagne. Aside from the biblical note that Nimrod’s ancestors colonized the East, there is no other reason why he is the genealogical antecedent for “Muslim” Rodomonte. If anything, Rodomonte’s aspirational empire expands vertically toward Christian heaven and hell so that he would be the “emperor” of an afterlife.

Ariosto’s Western-Hector Eastern-Nimrod genealogical split is further complicated by the fact that some of the pagans/Saracens/Mohommadans seek out

Hector’s arms and Hector’s lineage. Rodomonte, the Algerian King, seems to be the exception in exclusively tracing his roots to Nimrod. For example, the “Tartar King”

Mandricard’s obsession is to locate every piece of Hector’s arms and armor and win them for himself (14.40-49, 23). He will carry neither a sword nor wear a helmet unless they are the ones that belonged to Hector. The competition for Hector’s arms by knights in both sides of the war testifies to the fact that there is no such thing as a

105 geographical pagan-Muslim East. Charlemagne’s side is not the only one seeking reclamation of an Augustan Golden Age (as Melissa predicts for Bradamante and

Ruggiero’s progeny), but many from the motley enemy side as well, since they too envision participation in the esteemed Trojan family tree. In the same way, and as will be evident in Spenser as well, there is by no means a unified Christian “West.” Both sides of the battle have members who seek to trace their ancestry to Hector (whether by blood or simply military inheritance).

Why is Ruggiero Muslim?

The most obvious initial answer to this question is that Ruggiero was Muslim in Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato before him. However, in perpetuating the adventures of Charlemagne and his twelve peers, Ariosto elaborates upon Ruggiero’s background and his deferral of baptism. Both actual consanguineous and also heroic genealogies are the key to interpreting Ariosto’s treatment of Ruggiero’s Islamic faith and subsequent conversion to Christianity. Ariosto goes to great lengths to describe

Ruggiero’s penitence as he is baptized. In canto 41, after delaying his baptism and

(somewhat) changing his allegiance from Agramante to Charlemagne, Ruggiero is shipwrecked and nearly drowns. Ariosto impresses upon his readers the allegorical

Christian significance of his brush with death. A holy hermit succors him to physical and spiritual health after calling out to him, “Saulo, Saulo […], perché persegui la mia fede?” ‘Saul, Saul why do you persecute my faith?’ (41.53), evoking St. Paul’s turn to

Christianity. Yet, unlike Saul/Paul’s transgressions prior to his final conversion,

Ruggiero has acted as nobly as any knight from the Christian sector (and arguably

106 more so than Orlando). Aside from the fact that he fights for Charlemagne’s enemies and that his mother was African, Ruggiero’s Islamic faith is understated. One never witnesses Quranic recitation, prayer, or even mention of Islamic prohibitions such as

Rodomonte’s being unaccustomed to wine (in canto 29). On the other hand, Ariosto dedicates much of canto 41 to an expanded description of Ruggiero’s conversion and baptism as he comes “back” into the fold of Christianity. Such language of

“reclamation” and restitution evokes Melissa’s prophecy from the beginning of the poem, where she instructs Bradamante to pursue her love in the name of restoring Italy to its rightful owners, hers and Ruggiero’s progeny. Ariosto’s treatment of Ruggiero’s

Islamic faith through baptism only goes part way to “purify” the Estensi bloodlines, however. Why make Ruggiero Muslim at all?

Ruggiero’s genealogical relationship to Hector—consanguineal and heroic—is key to answering this question. With a nod to David Quint’s reading of the Ethiopian warrior Clorinda in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, I suggest that part of the answer lies in the fact that Ruggiero’s conversion from Islam serves as Christian wish fulfillment.104 Quint writes:

That beneath Clorinda’s armed Islamic exterior—hidden beneath her

armor—lies a Christian woman ready to become the bride of Christ

may be meant to remind us that historically the Holy Land was itself

once Christian and that the present Muslim domination is merely a

recent overlay and usurpation: Tasso calls the Saracens “gli usurpatori

di Siòn” (1.81), and begins his narrative by describing the persecutions

104 See Quint’s chapter “Political Allegory in the Liberata,” in Epic and Empire, 213-247.

107

against the Christian population of Jerusalem enacted by the “new

king” Aladino (1.83f.). In this sense, Clorinda’s story is a legitimating

emblem of the Crusade itself, which restores to Palestine its “proper”

Christian identity that was there all along, although politically

supplanted and covered over by a false religion. (Quint 244)

Similar to Clorinda, who was born to a black, Ethiopian, Muslim mother (who immaculately conceived her white child while gazing upon a picture of St. George),

Ruggiero is a warrior whose Islam is constructed as a temporary lapse. However,

Ruggiero’s lapse is not merely his own, but a chink in the Christianity of his genealogy. In his analysis, Quint offers the historical background of the Christian

Ethiopians and Atani Tingil (known in early modern literature as Prete Ianni, Prester

John, and Senapo) of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.105 Based upon a letter delivered by the priest Francisco Alvarez in 1533, the papacy and its supporters believed that they had a Christian ally in lands that were primarily Muslim. In a second letter to Pope Clement published in Ramusio’s Navigazioni e viaggi, Atani

Tingil writes that “we will open a way both by land and sea through the provinces of the evil Moors, and we will attack them with such fury that we will drive them from their thrones and kingdoms, and so Christians will be able easily to go back and forth to the temple of Jerusalem at their own good pleasure” (2:379).106 As Quint notes, however, the Holy League’s hope of being aided by the outlying Ethiopian Christians was misplaced. The Coptic Ethiopians, with their own Judiacial practices (such as circumcision) not only refused to pledge allegiance to the pope, but were also

105 For more on Prester John, see my introduction. 106 Giovanni Battista Ramusio Navigazioni e viaggi, Vol 2, 379.

108 considered a heretical brand of Catholicism. In addition, after suffering countless invasions from their neighbors, far from being able to offer assistance, the Ethiopians sought military support of their own.

The fantasy of a Catholic oasis in Africa persisted, however, in the decades that Orlando furioso was published (1516, revised 1521, 1532). In addition, the Holy

League had not yet been formed (1571 by Pope Pius V) so there was a lack of solidarity of Catholic states. Quint suggests Tasso’s Clorinda may be meant to remind us that Jerusalem was once Christian land. Ariosto does something similar, but with a significant difference. I argue that Ariosto reconstructs Ruggiero’s pagan Trojan genealogy as always having been Christian (and perhaps specifically Catholic). By bringing the not-so-Muslim Ruggiero “back” to Catholicism, Ariosto recasts

Ruggiero’s Trojan-heroic genealogy within Christian teleology. The result of such a teleological rewriting is twofold. First, it places Ariosto’s Estensi patrons in a flattering light (since they become not only the inheritors of Hector, but of an important Christian lineage as well). Subsequently, the projection of power insidiously challenges the papal and Holy Roman emperor Charles V.

During the time that Ariosto crafted and published his three versions of

Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532) there was considerable animosity between the d’Este family and the pope. Alliances shifted between the rulers of England, France,

Spain, and even the Ottoman Turkish Empire as Italy was besieged.107 Once Charles V assumed the position of Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, Ariosto necessarily wrote from the delicate position of deference to the Hapsburg emperor and also criticism

107 See Housley, Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536, 13-32, 62-98. See also Guido Waldman, Introduction, Orlando furioso, vii-xiv.

109 toward a vaguely defined “Spain” for its incursions in an equally ill-defined Italy. As I mentioned above regarding the Holy Roman Emperor’s coronation crown and his assumption of the title of “Caesar,” at this time Charles V was engaging in genealogical construction of his own. By anointing himself as another “Caesar,” he positioned himself as the culmination of the Virgilian Trojan genealogy begun with

Aeneas. Ariosto, by making the founder of his patron’s bloodlines Hector, effectively bypasses Charles V.

To illustrate Ariosto’s conflicted stance towards the amorphous category of

Spain, I first draw attention to the palimpsest he creates between Charlemagne’s forces and those of the Holy League’s seven hundred years later. With both direct comparison and also the consanguineous genealogies of Bradamante and Ruggiero,

Ariosto unquestioningly parallels the British, French, and Italian Catholic soldiers under Charlemagne with those of his contemporaries fighting the Ottoman Turks under the control of Süleyman in his own time. Initially referring to Syria, Ariosto laments inaction against the Ottoman Turks in the Holy Land as well:

Nowadays to their shame, Christians, the arrogant wretches, leave these

places in the hands of dogs./ They ought to be setting their lances for

the greater spread of our Faith; instead, they are running each other

through the breast or belly and wreaking destruction on the few who

already belong to the Faith. You men of Spain, you Frenchmen, you

Swiss and Germans, turn your steps elsewhere, make worthier

conquests: what you covet here is already Christ’s. If you wish to be

called Most Christian, if you wish to be called Catholic, why do you

110 kill Christ’s men? Why not despoil them of their possessions? Why do you not retake Jerusalem, seized from you by renegades? Why is

Constantinople and the better part of the world occupied by unclean

Turks? / Spain, have you not Africa for neighbor—Africa, who has done far worse to you than Italy? And yet to bring suffering on our wretched country you abandon the fine enterprise you started so well.

(Waldman 185-6)

[O]ra i superbi e miseri cristiani, con biasmi lor, lasciano in man de’ cani.

Dove abbassar dovrebbono la lancia in augumento de la santa fede, tra lor si dan nel petto e ne la pancia a destruzion del poco che si crede. voi, gente ispana, e voi, gente di Francia, volgete altrove, e voi Svizzeri, il piede, e voi Tedeschi, a far piú degno acquisto; che quanto qui cercate è già di Cristo.

Se Cristianissimi esser voi volete, e voi altri Catolici nomati, perché di Cristo gli uomini uccidete? perché de’ beni lor son dispogliati?

Perché Ierusalem non rïavete, che tolto è stato a voi da’ rinegati?

111

Perché Constantinopoli e del mondo

la miglior parte occupa il Turco immondo?

Non hai tu, Spagna, l’Africa vicina,

che t’ha via piú di questa Italia offesa?

E pur, per dar travaglio alla meschina,

lasci la prima tua sí bella impresa. (17.73-76)

Spain is certainly not singled out as Ariosto rages against the Swiss, the Germans,

Pope Leo, and “Italy” itself for “sleeping.” In this passage, Ariosto broadly insists that all quarrels are petty except those that are for united Catholicism. With “ora”

‘nowadays’ and “qui” ‘here,’ Ariosto constructs a deictic moment comparing the holy and noble enterprises of Charlemagne’s “Cristianissimi” knights of centuries past with those of his own time and place. Indeed, Ariosto indirectly refers to Charles V using the exact title—“most Christian”—that the kings of Spain used since 1492.108

However, the bizarre and problematic aspects of the palimpsest—as well as the competitive Trojan genealogies between the Estensi and Charles V—arise from the disjointed parallel of “Spain” past and present. Simply put, Spain is Charlemagne’s primary enemy (along with Agramante of Africa) “then,” but in the “now,” Charles V and sixteenth century “Spain” posture as the leaders of the Holy League (along with the papal forces) against the Ottoman Turks. Ariosto purposefully and uneasily avoids explaining the process by which the “Spain” of Orlando furioso evolves from

Pagan/Muslim to “Most Catholic” and its leaders change from Muslim Agramante to

“Most Christian” Charles V. One witnesses how Ariosto conflates Charlemagne’s

108 See the note to 17.75.1-2 in Orlando furioso, ed. Lanfranco Caretti, 461.

112 enemies: ‘Stringonsi insieme, e prendono la via/per mezzo ove s’alloggiano i cristiani,/ gridando Africa e Spagna tuttavia/ e si scoprirono in tutto esser pagani’

(18:1-3, p.807) “They drew together, and as they thrust into the heart of the Christian camp they kept up the cry ‘Africa!’ ‘Spain!’, and revealed themselves for pagans.”

Vestiges of Leo Africanus’ “Africa” appear—a Muslim grouping of “Dar al-Salam”

‘Land of Peace’ as opposed to “Dar al-Harb” ‘Land of War.’ As Spain was Africa, so it was also Muslim for Ariosto. However, returning to the above quotation where

Ariosto criticizes all Western Christian forces, the inheritors of Charlemagne, Ariosto describes a Spain that he believes should be inimical to Africa—i.e. distinct from

“Africa”—so much so that he finds it outrageous that “Spain” would bring suffering to

Italy, a would-be ally in the ‘bella impresa’ “fine enterprise” it started so well. I would argue that his charge against Spain is even passively suggestive of an alliance for its inaction against Africa. I am not suggesting that Ariosto intentionally depicted Spain as an Islamic state with his palimpsest of Muslim and Christian (or Pagan and

Christian) forces. Rather, his omission of any historical explanation is ironically a deictic moment that illustrates the rocky, incomplete, and even hypocritical process in which, for Ariosto, Spain had been re-defining itself as a Christian, nay Catholic entity. That the newly united Catholic Spain would make incursions against Italy is inconceivable and inexcusable to Ariosto. In addition, if indeed “Cristianissimi” refers to Charles V, it is attributed with sarcasm, pointing out the hypocrisy of the title. His jagged overlay is a subtle chiding of Spain’s bad behavior, the most overt criticism he can dole out from his position as Estensi poet.

113

Ariosto accomplishes a more underhanded subterfuge toward Charles V, however, by means of his genealogical pageants and how he approaches the issue of

“reclamation.” As I suggested in the beginning of this chapter, in his role as a vatic poet, Ariosto attempts the task of prognosticator as detailed by Spenser in his letter to

Ralegh. Indeed, he goes one step further by predicting the next Holy Roman Emperor.

In the 1516 edition of Orlando furioso, Ariosto stages yet another genealogical pageant in Merlin’s fountain. In canto 26, Ruggiero, Marfisa, and Rinaldo’s cousins encounter the figures of Henry VIII, Francis I, the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles of Burgundy (before his election to the imperial throne as Charles V). Each cooperates to slay a strange and allegorical beast, but it is Francis I that Ariosto glorifies as the prominent figure “felice imperator.”109 In 1516, the French-Spanish rivalry for

Emperor Maximilian’s throne was well underway and with France’s involvement in

Italy it must have appeared as though the French king was the leading candidate to succeed him.110 In 1532, twenty-three years after his prediction proved incorrect,

Ariosto revised his poem to conform with contemporary history.111 In the fountain episode, his revisions instead featured his Spanish patrons Francisco and Alfonso

109 See Alberto Casadei for more on the variations of the three editions, La strategia delle varianti: le correzioni storiche del terzo Furioso (Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1988) 44-49. 110 See Arnold’s chapter “Dueling Kings” in Renaissance at War, 140-171. 111 See also Robert Durling who discusses another genealogical pageant, the paintings in the Rocca di Tristano from canto 33, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965) 139-140. For Ariosto’s exact changes in this canto see also Casadei’s La strategia delle varianti, 89-94.

114 d’Avalos (26.52) and substituted “Carlo quinto imperator” in place of “Carlo di

Borgogna” (26.35.5).112

In his discussion of the ekphrasis of Merlin’s fountain, Eric MacPhail believes that such revisionary prophecy “tacitly acknowledges the inadequacy of foresight and confirms the contingency of historical events.”113 A simpler way of looking at the revision is that Ariosto would have appeared foolish with an inaccurate “prophecy” in which “true history” had gotten ahead of him. In addition, given Ariosto’s patronage, it is likely that he had no choice but to alter the “prediction,” regardless of the fact that it was incorrect. Such prognostications are perhaps the best example of epic’s winners constructing and “shaping” their end. In this case, however, Ariosto, as the mouthpiece for Italy and the d’Este family follows behind history, tidying up inaccurate guesses to accommodate facts and maintain the pretense of power for his patrons and for his country.

In addition to the 1532 changes Ariosto made to Canto 26, he added a new passage to canto 15 where Andronica tells of the coming of Charles V. When Astolfo asks her about a more direct sea route to the Indies from the pillars of Hercules, she begins her vision rhapsodizing about the coming of “la santa croce” ‘the Holy Cross,’

“I segni imperïal” ‘imperial standards,’ “I regni di là da l’India ad Aragon suggetti”

‘kingdoms beyond the Indies being subjected to Aragon,’ and

Charles V’s captains sweeping all before them./ God willed that this

route should in the past have remained concealed, and should so

112 In Marco Dorigatti’s edition of the 1516 Orlando furioso, the corresponding canto is 24, Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso secondo la princeps del 1516, ed. Marco Dorigatti (Ferrara: Leo S. Olschki, 2006). 113 MacPhail, “Ariosto and the Prophetic Moment,” 36.

115

continue for still many a year: […]for he has reserved its discovery

until the day when He places the world under the monarchy of the

wisest and most just emperor who ever lived or shall live, after

Augustus./ […] The Supreme Good has awarded him the crown of the

great empire once ruled over by Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius,

and Septimus Severus; not only this, but also that he should rule over

every land near and far.

i capitan di Carlo quinto,

dovunque vanno aver per tutto vinto.

Dio vuol ch’ascosa antiquamente questa

strada sia stata, e ancor gran tempo stia;

[………………………………………]

che vorrà porre il mondo a monarchia,

sotto il piú saggio imperatore e giusto,

che sia stato o sarà mai dopo Augusto.

[……………….] la Bontà suprema

non solamente di quel grande impero

ha disegnato ch’abbia dïadema

ch’ebbe Augusto, Traian, Marco e Severo;

ma d’ogni terra e quinci e quindi estrema. (15:23-26)

In this passage, abbreviated from Andronica’s lengthy “vision,” Ariosto articulates exactly who makes up Charles’ heroic genealogy—Roman emperors beginning with

Augustus. He clarifies, however, that compared with the Roman Empire, Charles V’s

116 empire will be both “Holy” and expansive. It shall extend far beyond the borders of the former Roman Empire. Ariosto’s sycophantic changes to his earlier editions of

Orlando furioso are fascinating in how he fulfills the prototypical, Virgilian role as poet lauding patrons and emperor. However, the revisions clash with the ubiquitous vituperations of Spain that he leaves unchanged in the poem. Indeed, canti 15 and 26 contain the only two moments in the entire poem where Ariosto advertises Charles V’s

“genealogy” as the inheritor of Augustus’ Roman Empire.

Ariosto mentions Caesar Augustus only four times in the last edition of

Orlando furioso: in the two aforementioned canti discussing Charles V, in Melissa’s prediction that Bradamante and Ruggiero’s progeny will “reclaim” the territory and lost Golden age of Augustus, and in an ironic passage regarding poets in canto 35.

Attempting to recover Orlando’s lost wits, Astolfo is accompanied by John the

Evangelist to the river Lethe where swans (allegories of poets we are told) rescue names from the river that are scooped up by an old man (Time). The author of the

Gospels advises that poets follow Caesar’s example, which is to befriend writers before becoming forgotten in time. However, his speech quickly changes from advice to mordant commentary as he states,

Aeneas was not as devoted, nor Achilles as strong, nor Hector as

ferocious as their reputations suggest. […] What has brought them their

sublime renown have been the writers honoured with gifts of palaces

and great estates donated by these heroes’ descendants./ Augustus was

not as august and beneficent as Virgil makes him out in clarion tones—

but his good taste in poetry compensates for the evil of his

117 proscriptions. […] But if you want to know what really happened, invert the story: Greece was vanquished, Troy triumphant, and

Penelope a whore./ Listen on the other hand to what reputation Dido left behind, whose heart was so chaste: she was reputed a strumpet purely because Virgil was no friend of hers. (Waldman 425)

Non sí pietoso Enea, né forte Achille fu, come è fama, né sí fiero Ettorre;

[…………………………………] ma i donati palazzi e le gran ville dai descendenti lor, gli ha fatto porre in questi senza fin sublimi onori da l’onorate man degli scrittori.

Non fu sí santo né benigno Augusto come la tuva di Virgilio suona.

L’aver avuto in poesia buon gusto la proscrizion iniqua gli perdona.

[…………………………………]

E se tu vuoi che ‘l ver non ti sia ascoso, tutta al contrario l’istoria converti: che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice, e che Penelopea fu meretrice.

Da l’altra parte odi che fama lascia

Elissa, ch’ebbe il cor tanto pudico;

118

Che riputata viene una bagascia,

Solo perché Maron non le fu amico. (35.25-28)

Most criticism on this episode centers around the issue of patronage and poetical lying.114 In short, history is inverted by the poet based upon his biases, which, in turn, are influenced by the gifts and power given to him by his patron. However, Astolfo and St. John’s discussion is a fundamental prescription for Ariosto’s genealogical construction as well. It is not merely a bid for patronage, but an acknowledgement of how an author “prophesizes,” by means of doctoring history to accommodate his or her agenda (whether it dovetails with that of the patron, or not). In addition, the

Evangelist’s statement serves as a subtle threat to genealogies. If an exulted hero’s descendents do not shower the author with palazzi and ville, than the author has the ability to rewrite his genealogy completely, including or excluding whomever he pleases. While, Ariosto playfully mocks his own patron’s “progenitor” Hector as well, the implications toward the Julian dynasty, Charles’ V’s postured genealogy, are harsh.

In his discussion with Astolfo, St. John, the author of the Gospels, serves as

Ariosto’s ironic voice. He overtly slanders Virgil for doing what he himself must, and does in fact do with his late changes regarding Charles V. By censuring Virgil’s (and indeed all poets’) treatment of his patron Caesar Augustus, Ariosto carefully criticizes

Charles V as well. First, Ariosto declares that Charles V’s supposed model “ancestor”

Augustus, was at best a dull, withdrawn leader. Second, since Ariosto recently created

114 For a review of criticism on this episode, see Barbara Fuchs’ Mimesis and Empire, 17-18, 169 and Patricia Parker who argues that St. John’s advice threatens to “reduce even the Gospel to the status of a literary fiction” Inescapable Romance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979) 51.

119 the same hyperbolic poetry about the Holy Roman Emperor, he tacitly admits that

Charles V is equally lackluster, merely a poet’s pawn. As his other passages on Spain suggest, perhaps his real depiction of Charles V, Spain, and the “Holy Roman Empire” is really one of mismanagement and cruelty towards fellow Christian states. They are not the inheritors of Charlemagne. Ariosto’s story is not ever meant to laud a Julian-

Virgilian genealogy, but rather a Trojan-Christian one beginning with Hector for the d’Este family.

My reading of the above passage on poets extends to the reclamation urged by

Melissa earlier in the poem. “Reclamation” for Italy is complicated. One must always ask, reclamation from whom and for whom? Melissa’s prophetic remarks suggest that

Ruggiero and Bradamante’s family must reclaim Italy for the original Trojan bloodlines, but she (or Ariosto) never specify just who is the enemy that has taken over Italy in Bradamante and Ruggiero’s present, nor who will have overrun its lands in the “future times” of Ariosto and the Estensi. I suggest that this is because the primary threat to Italy, in Ariosto’s view, is not the Ottoman Turkish empire, but

Charles V and Spain. The Astolfo/St. John passage colors any reading of the two laudatory late emendations regarding the Holy Roman Emperor. Andronica’s praise of the coming of the “one” who will unite Christendom and take back lands for Italy is parodical if one believes that Ariosto sees him and Spain as the ones who have usurped Italy in the first place.

By the time the last edition of Orlando furioso was published, the Estensi family’s power was waning. With Ariosto’s death several months later, any further changes, historical revisions, prognostications, or genealogical construction

120 necessarily ended and the celebrated union—Ruggiero and Bradamante’s—became the central and most important.

Fashioning heirs

The remainder of this chapter will contend with how Edmund Spenser constructs genealogies in the Faerie Queene (1590, 1596) to reflect and even suggest a solution to one of Britain’s most pressing dilemmas of his day—Queen Elizabeth’s heir. By the time Spenser published the first three books of the Faerie Queene, Queen

Elizabeth was in her late fifties, a self-declared “virgin queen,” and unmarried. She did not name James as her heir until shortly before her death in 1603. Nonetheless, as in

Orlando furioso, the Faerie Queene projects imperial power and prognosticates the

“future” through several genealogical pageants. In addition, similar to how Ariosto describes battling Christian and Muslim powers in his poem, Spenser declares that the master narrative of all twelve books in the Faerie Queene will be the ultimate fight between the Faerie Queene and the Paynim King. With a Christian twist to Virgil’s opening in the Aeneid, “arma virumque cano,” Spenser writes,

I of warres and bloody Mars do sing,

And Bryton fieldes with Sarazin blood bedyde,

Twixt that great faery Queene and Paynim king,

[…………………………………]

to my tunes thy second tenor rayse

That I this man of God his godly armes may blaze (I.xi)

121

The poet exclaims that, though a mere “man of God,” he will sing of Britain’s war with Muslims. However, the reality is that the reader never encounters either the Faery

Queene or the Paynim King. The already muddled “black and white” of Christian and

Muslim powers in Ariosto is even greyer in Spenser.

Spenser does not merely imitate the premise of warring Muslim and Christian forces. His close imitation of Ariosto’s style and subject matter cannot be emphasized enough. As with Ariosto, Spenser’s romance is a poem occupied with chivalric knights, diverse and simultaneous quests, magicians, and multifarious misshapen and disguised enemies. The tone and moral seriousness of Spenser’s poem, however, are a far cry from the playful irony of Orlando furioso.115

A major difference between Ariosto and Spenser lies in the allegorical nature of the latter poet’s poem.116 First, unlike Ariosto, Spenser never draws direct parallels between poetical and contemporary events. Sometimes Spenser’s allegory reads as a mirror image for something else (whether an attribute, virtue, or an actual person), while at other times, allegory is elusive and unclear. However, he does not evoke a

“Golden Age” of past with comparison to the corroding present the way Ariosto does regarding Italy. In Book 1, Redcrosse knight, or St. George, is emblematic of

“Holiness.” On a quest to serve Una, whose father and mother (an emperor and empress from Rome) have been held hostage by a dragon, Redcrosse is in turn assisted and educated in proper holy comportment by Una as well. The allegory of Book I serves to broadly criticize alleged papal usurpation of the “true church” in Rome,

115 See Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, for a discussion on the differences between Ariosto and Spenser’s respective narrators, 211-237. 116 Harry Berger’s The Allegorical Temper remains the authoritative study on allegory in the Faerie Queene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).

122 introduce the supposedly Muslim “Sans” brothers (men without “faith,” “love,” or

“joy”), and ultimately serve as a personal education for Redcrosse. However,

Spenser’s treatment of allegory modulates since he introduces a new moral virtue and an entirely new hero with each book. One witnesses this in the dramatically different

Book 2, where Guyon is “tempered” (for “Temperance”) with the help of a palmer acting as his minder. Spenser seems to suggest that temperance is activated only through a show of intemperance (as in the Bower of Bliss) and subsequently mediated through something or someone else. Temperance is a process. Unlike Orlando furioso, where divergent plots generally weave together by the poem’s end, there is surprising discontinuity between books. One reason for this is the unfinished nature of the Faerie

Queene. Aside from brief appearances of prior knights in later books and a handful of minor nemeses (compared with the Paynim King) such as Acrasia or Archimago, the only sure unifying character is young King Arthur who enters into every book.

Spenser explains the formula for his poem in the “Letter to Ralegh.” He propounds that the “generall end” of his book is to “fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline” and that he will do this by making the work

“plausible and pleasing” and “coloured with an historicall fiction.”117 He means to

117 “I chose the historye of king Arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many mens former workes, and also furthest from the daunger of enuy, and suspition of present time. In which I haue followed all the antique Poets historicall, first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Vlysses hath ensampled a good gouernour and a virtuous man, the one in his Ilius, the other in his Odysseis: then Orlando: and lately Tasso disseuered them again, and formed both parts in two persons, namely that part which they in Philosophy call Ethice, or virtues of a priuate man, coloured in his Rinaldo: The other named Politice in his Godfredo. By ensample of which excellente Poets, I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a braue knight, perfected in the twelue priuate morall virtues, as Aristotle hath deuised, the which is the purpose of these first twelue bookes: which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encouraged, to frame the other part of

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“pourtraict” twelve moral virtues through the knight Arthur, before he was a king. As with the other knights and the books in which they are featured, one must ask, by

“pourtraict,” does Spenser intend that Arthur is emblematic of the virtues (and thus instructing others) or acquiring them himself? Since Arthur is the model for fashioning others, this becomes an important question. Should readers learn from Arthur’s inherent magnificence or learn from his journey and his mistakes as well? As the thread that binds Spenser’s story, Arthur and the Faerie Queene generally serve as an instruction manual on not only how to become a “gentleman,” but on kingship.

However, there is the noteworthy dedication to Queen Elizabeth, as well as the fact that each book revolves around the court of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene meant to represent Queen Elizabeth. Thus, another person being fashioned, even while her virtues are refracted for the fashioning of others, is Gloriana, and Queen Elizabeth as well. Spenser not only actively fashions a gentleman experientially through each book and each knight, but also retrospectively by discussing their lineages and bloodlines.

In fact, the notion of “fashioning a gentleman” is another way of describing genealogic construction—perhaps in the most overt way of all of the works that I discuss in this dissertation.118

polliticke virtues in his person, after that hee came to be king.” “A Letter of the Authors expounding his whole intention in the course of this worke: which for that it giueth great light to the Reader, for the better vnderstanding,” in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, 714- 718. 118 One might argue that this single phrase—“to fashion a gentleman or noble person”— spawned the entire generation of New Historicists. As with New Historicism, my discussion of genealogical construction in Spenser, or “fashioning a gentleman,” in contingent upon the back and forth between historical fact and how those facts are represented in literature. See for example, Stephen Greenblatt whose book on the construction of early modern “selves” is based upon the concept of “fashioning,” Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).

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In the proem to Book 2, Spenser invites Queen Elizabeth to see parallels between Faery Lond and Britain:

Of faery lond yet if he more inquire

By certain signes here sett in sondrie place

He may it fynd; ne let him then admire

But yield his sence to bee too blunt and bace

That no’te without an hound fine footing trace.

And thou, O fairest Princesse vnder sky,

In this fayre mirrhour maist behold thy face

And thine owne realms in lond of Faery,

And in this antique ymage thy great auncestry. (2.0.4)

There is an odd synchronicity whereby Spenser urges his queen to view her own face

“here” “now” in “this fayre mirrhour” of Faery Lond and simultaneously see the

“then” in the “antique ymage” of her ancestors. As I have detailed above, Spenser had a massive stumbling block in his task as it related to his would-be patron Queen

Elizabeth—the definitive knowledge that Queen Elizabeth would never have a child of her own. Projecting or prognosticating about Elizabeth’s progeny was impossible. I suggest that one strategy for resolving this issue was collapsing present time with what

Spenser called “historicall” time in his poem.119 This is a quite different way of dealing with the historical reality with which Ariosto also grappled (in the Charles V emendations of the 1532 edition).

119 See the “Letter to Ralegh” The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton, 715.

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In Ariosto, the genealogical pageant defined clear distinctions in time, such that his heroes in the “past” would not only succeed in their quests, but also propagate their lineages with children who would nurture the dynasty in the “future,” Ariosto’s own time. In Spenser, however, the allegorical framework complicates this schematic, by partially collapsing the teleological aspect of the pageant. In short, time is flattened and all characters—real or imaginary—exist in the same mythical, timeless “present” of the poem. In some ways, Spenser imitates Ariosto (and Virgil’s Anchises revelation) by divining the future kin of his most celebrated union of knights,

Britomart and Artegall, Bradamante and Ruggiero’s counterparts. In two genealogical pageants Spenser reframes the British genealogies detailed in Geoffrey of

Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini (Prophecies of Merlin). First, I analyze the pageant in

Book 2 at the Castle of Alma (i.e. “House of Temperance”) and then its complementary passage in Merlin’s revelation to Britomart through his magic mirror in Book 3.

Constructing Arthur

Though some scholars speculate that it circulated well in advance of being published, Sir John Harington’s full translation of Orlando furioso appeared in 1591

(one year after the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queene) followed by the revisions of 1607 and 1634.120 Harington, Queen Elizabeth’s godson, was

“punished” by being ordered to translate Orlando furioso in full after he was caught

120 See Rudolf Gottfriend’s notes to his edition, Rudolf Brand Gottfried, Introduction, Orlando furioso; Selections from the Translation of Sir John Harington, By Ludovico Ariosto, Trans. John Harington (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963) 9-20.

126 circulating the bawdy tale of Jocundo from canto twenty-eight amongst the ladies of the Court. With the exception of frequent contractions of the text, Harington’s rhymed translation is fairly faithful to Ariosto’s last edition of Orlando furioso. A notable change is in his translation of canto fifteen, Andronica’s prophecy of the passage linking England and Spain to the Indies. Where Ariosto had (truthfully or sarcastically) glorified Charles V, Harington now mutes his praise. Instead of following Ariosto’s prophecies that Charles V will be the greatest emperor since

Augustus, Harington states that he will be on par with Trajan, Aurelius, and Augustus.

(He compounds two stanze from Ariosto, but the effect is the same towards Charles

V.) In addition, in the gloss of the canto’s “Historie,” Harington comes across as defensive regarding why he praises Charles V at all, which suggests that such an inclusion (or accurate translation) would raise eyebrows. Most of his excusal is based upon precedent; others have praised Charles V so, he defends, he is merely following historical fact. He continues, “And for the Indian voyages we need not so much admire the captaines of foren nations, hauing two of our owne nation that haue both as forwardly aduentured, and as fortunately performed them; namely Sir Francis Drake, whom I touched before, and young master Candish.”121 Candish and Sir Francis Drake serve as English parallels to Charles V and his Spanish captains, namely Andrea

Doria, for having just as “forwardly” adventured, or explored “Indian voyages.” I view

Spenser’s choice of Arthur in the Faery Queene, as a response to the feeling of competition with (and perhaps even inadequacy towards) Spain revealed in

Harington’s prefatory explanation.

121 Note that I have modernized all long “f” with “s,” Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, trans John Harington (London, 1591) 119.

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The legend of Arthur became fodder for historical fact. A revival of narratives about Arthur sought out the nation’s past imperial grandeur, but each nationalizing movement brought with it a sense of historical discontinuity. Andrew Escobedo elucidates such discontinuity in relation to England’s rift with Rome: “The

Reformation broke with centuries of devotional and ecclesiastic tradition, and when

Tudor and Stuart Protestants looked for their medieval past, they saw Catholics staring back at them” (Escobedo 4).122 Not unlike the moriscos attempt to “discover” the

Arabic plomos revealing Granada's supposed evangelization by Saint James the

Apostle (who, by inference may also have spoken Arabic), the “rediscovery” or insertion of Arthur into British history served to forge an early Protestant presence in

England. Escobedo notes further,

The Tudors thus began to re-create Arthurian history most urgently at

the moment their historical inquiries started to make them suspect that

this history was either fictitious or simply lost […]Many English

Reformers tried to use this period of ancient British Christianity as the

answer to the Roman Church’s alleged anteriority. At first glance, then,

Arthur recovered the past of both church and nation, his heroic

resistance to Roman incursions setting a precedent for contemporary

England’s anti-Catholicism [...]The poverty of historical evidence for

the British prince’s existence often painfully reminded the antiquaries

of their nation’s lack of a glorious (and well-documented) history,

122Andrew Escobedo, Nationalism and Historical Loss in Renaissance England: Foxe, Dee, Spenser, Milton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

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which had forced them to turn to Arthur in the first place. (Escobedo

47)123

In the Castle of Alma, Spenser has Arthur literally turn back as if to stage the historical Arthur’s assent that, yes, he was a foundational part of British history.

Specifically in Eumenestes’ (“Good Memory”) library, Spenser stages two novel genealogical pageants: that of faeries in “Antiquitee of Faerie lond” and of the British in “Briton monuments.” In the latter book, Arthur reads of his ancestors and their deeds. Whereas Virgil and Ariosto forecast the progeny of their heroes from epic time leading to the time of their patrons, Spenser antedates the pageant further. He begins in a prior legendary time that culminates in the epic (“historicall”) time of his heroes.

In addition, the novelty of these pageants lies in the fact that both Arthur and Guyon read privately about their ancestors instead of gazing upon a vision, sculpture, or tapestry presenting genealogies. On one hand, Spenser’s twist may merely reflect increased literacy in Britain at the end of the sixteenth century. On the other hand,

Arthur’s reading Briton monuments strengthens the pageant’s importance for Queen

Elizabeth, who, like the heroes, would in turn be reading (or hearing someone else read) the Faerie Queene as well. Their reactions—particularly Arthur’s—to “British monuments” act as a model or suggestion for her reaction.

Spenser begins canto ten of Book 2 by announcing that he will recount the

“famous auncestryes” of his “most dreaded Soueraigne.” Guyon’s book of the faery ancestry culminates in Gloriana, while Arthur’s British book ends suddenly,

123 See also John E. Curran, Jr., Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti- Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England, 1530-1660 (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2002) and Jennifer Summit, “Monuments and Ruins: Spenser and the Problem of the English Library,” ELH 70 (2003) 1-34.

129 immediately prior to the narration of his own birth. Because of a repeated inability to establish a male heir, the British history chronicle is divided into four interregna:

Brutus’ progeny’; the death of Lucius following the Roman invasion; the invasion of the Huns and Picts during which Maximinian ‘dying left none heir them to withstand’; and finally 62-68.2 ends with the coming of Arthur.124 Like Elizabeth, Arthur died heirless.125

In the first interregnum, Spenser creates the vision of a powerful Britain despite massacres, brutality, and instability of those times. Arthur begins reading that

“Albion”—as it was called—was inhabited by boorish, naked giants

Vntil that Brutus anciently deriu’d

From roiall stocke of old Assaracs line,

Driuen by fatall error, here arriu’d,

And them of their vniust possession depriu’d. (II.x.9)

As with Ariosto’s emphasis on Hector of Troy, Spenser too elaborates the Trojan genealogy of his heroes. Assarac, the founder of Troy, was great-grandfather to

Aeneas who in turn was Brutus’ great-grandfather. By “them of their vniust possession depriu’d” Spenser seems to say that Brutus’ takeover of the island was precisely the opposite of “vniust”, a “just” possession suggestive of recovery and repossession from the giants.

124 For a thorough discussion of the interregna see Carrie A. Harper, The Sources of the British Chronicle History in Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Philadelphia: J.C. Winston, 1910). 125 See A.C. Hamilton’s notes to stanzas 5-68.2 The Faerie Queene, 248.

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After the seven hundred year end of Brutus’ line (stanza 36), the new dynasty began with Donwallo’s two sons. Spenser writes that Britain was all-powerful as a major force in the known world as Brennus and Belinus,

of peareless prowesse both;

That sacked Rome too dearely did assay,

The recompence of their periured oth,

And ransackt Greece wel tryde, when they were wroth;

Besides subiected France, and Germany (II.x.40)

After having broken its allegiance with them, Brennus and Belinus sacked Rome,

Greece and, almost as an afterthought, France and Germany. In other words,

Donwallo’s sons conquered Western “Europe,” as it would be known. Spenser creates the image of a superpower not unlike the Roman Empire. Spenser then chronicles

“warlike Caesar’s” unlawful usurpation of Britain as a result of envy. As a result,

Spenser explains, the “sweet Island” of Britain lost its independence only to become a tributary of Rome. He writes

Thenceforth this land was tributarie made

T’ambitious Rome, and did their rule obay,

Till Arthur all that reckoning defrayd;

Yet oft the Briton kings against them strongly swayd. (II.x.49)

In this prophetic moment, the chronicles tell us that Arthur will come and end the payments and decisively oust Romans from the island. In many ways, the British chronicles can be read as a series of loss to and recovery from “Rome.” Strangely,

Arthur reads about his own deeds, yet to be performed. This method of divining the

131 future is altogether unique from, for example, Melissa urging Bradamante on her quest in order to perpetuate her dynasty with Ruggiero. “It is written” takes on new meaning in Spenser where Arthur is assured that he will succeed in his political life based upon the fact that it has already been documented in his country’s historical chronicles.

Different from Ariosto where both the Estensi and also Charles V are presented as inheritors of a virile and auspicious Rome, Rome is at best a competitor and at worst an enemy. As defined by Spenser, Arthur’s ultimate task is to end unjust illegitimate

Roman colonization (“all that reckonying defray”).

Although not related by blood to Brutus, Arthur is related to him via kingship, as the propagator of the Roman line in Britain. This pseudo-relationship is strengthened by the mid-chronicle mention of “Troynouant” (II:x:46) or “New Troy,” which is meant to represent London. The presentation of Arthur’s greatest named feat as the subduing of Roman power in Britain serves as Spenser’s solution to Brutus’ consanguineal line ending without an heir. Rather than emphasizing how Arthur will be another end-of-the-line, Spenser highlights how he will perpetuate the Romano-

British line instead. Arthur effectively takes back “Troynouant” for the correct lineage of Romans. Just as Ariosto reaches beyond the Aenean-Julian dynasty to Hector, so

Spenser seeks the origins of Britain’s kings. Again, however, Spenser outdoes Ariosto.

His British heroes do not compete to be inheritors of Rome, but rather “New Troy,” a name that brings with it the greatness of the destroyed city meant to be replaced or rebuilt by Rome in Italy. As I will elaborate presently, “New Troy” does not pretend to be Rome, Spenser implies it is better and indeed more legitimate.

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Arthur’s reading is cut off “abruptly” when he arrives at his own father

“Vther” (II.x.67). Some critics view this “cesure” (as Spenser calls it) as a challenge to

Arthur to improve upon a flawed history, while others argue that it leaves Arthur in a timeless moment of a transcendent nation.126 Prince Arthur, though initially frustrated, experiences such “secret pleasure” and “wonder” at his antiquity that he is rendered speechless. His speech is not the only thing curtailed. The bombardment of words related to incompleteness in this final stanza (“end” “Cesure” “rend” “breach” “halfe”

“empeach” “stopt”) suggests the most basic reason for why the book’s history must end—Arthur too will inevitably die without an heir. He will be another rupture in the genealogy that haltingly leads to Queen Elizabeth.

Spenser temporarily avoids the reality of Arthur’s heir by presenting him as both young knight and ahistorical beloved of Gloriana. As I suggested above, besides

Arthur, Gloriana is the poem’s narrative link. Spenser noted in his “Letter to Ralegh” that he intended for all of the knights in the poem to revolve around the Faery Queen

Gloriana’s court, assisting her with missions in service of the ultimate defeat of a

Paynim King. However, she is a moving target. We never encounter Gloriana, nor hear her speak except as quoted by others. Arthur describes her as the woman who came to him in a dream, “She to me made, and badd me loue her deare;/For dearly sure her loue to me bent,/ As when iust time expired should appeare” (I:ix:14). The specified “iust time” for when Gloriana will reveal herself to Arthur never comes in books 1-6. She exists because other knights vouch to have engaged with her, but for

126 David Miller, The Poem’s Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 205-6 and David Baker Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

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Arthur, she is merely a goal, a dream, a vision—not unlike Arthur himself for sixteenth century British historiographers.

In the preceding canto to the history chronicles, Arthur and Guyon discuss the emblem of the Faery Queene on Guyon’s shield, reminding the reader of Arthur’s ultimate mission—to meet his beloved in the flesh, and, it is assumed, marry her. The historical Arthur, with whom all of Spenser’s readers would have been familiar, would marry Guinevere though, so his devout love for Gloriana comes across as a first infatuation at best. This is the first jarring experience of time. Gloriana in the poem’s

“present” is the culmination of Guyon’s book on Faeries. As Harry Berger points out,

“Arthur is Gloriana’s contemporary and Elizabeth’s ancestor, yet Gloriana and

Elizabeth are allegorical alter-egos. How is the reader to accept this contradictory state of affairs without admitting that the poet has been working at cross purposes, composing a work which is sometimes a poem, sometimes a tract?” (Berger 111).

Berger offers a partial answer; the demonstration of the fall of princes in the chronicles, combined with the felicitous imaginary history of Gloriana’s ancestors, would both instruct and please Queen Elizabeth.127 I would build upon this to suggest that Spenser humbly proposes a solution or model for Queen Elizabeth’s own problematic “issue.”

The purposeful blending of Gloriana and Elizabeth in the context of the Faerie

Queene is suspended from any reality (again abiding by Spenser’s aim to treat a subject and persons farthest from “envy of present time”). As such, the reader too can

127 Berger feels that one purpose for Queen Elizabeth would be didactic instruction through the fall of princes, “the progress of Great Britain from a slough to an empire would please her, the derivation of her inherited right from ancient and heroic royalty would delight her,” The Allegorical Temper, 113.

134 suspend Arthur’s historical reality, his future life as a king, and anticipate his symbolic union with Gloriana. Arthur and Gloriana’s marriage that never comes is certainly at

“cross purposes,” but ones that do not nullify each other. First, as the British king who both ousts the “bastard” Romans and also perpetuates the legitimate Trojan-Roman lineage, Arthur thus serves as an ideal metaphorical spouse for Queen Elizabeth. That he is her literal ancestor is of no concern because of the irreality of such a union and the allegory that projects Elizabeth only through Gloriana. The betrothal offers the most excellent of spouses (the Briton par excellence) and permits Gloriana to remain chaste—romance without consummation. Thus, allegorically Arthur is an ideal match for a queen who for decades used marriage proposals as a means to maintain her monarchical power without ever actually marrying any of her suitors.

Spenser’s Allegory: Constructing “New Troy”

The unfinished nature of the British genealogical pageant in Book 2 occasions its counterpart in the book of Chastity. In Book 3, Britomart explains her own amorous history. Like Arthur, she too became enamored with an image. Happening upon the magical prophetic mirror that Merlin gifted her father, Britomart sees

Artegall,

His crest was couered with a couchant Hownd,

And all his armour seemd of antique mould,

But wondrous massy and assured sownd,

And round about yfretted all with gold,

In which there written was with cyphres old,

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Achilles armes, which Arthogall did win.

And on his shield enueloped seuenfold

He bore a crowned little Ermilin,

That deckt the azure field with her fayre pouldred skin. (III:ii25)

Artegall’s physical appeal is his appearance in his arms and armor. Indeed, in the following stanza we learn that it was this vision of him that caused the “false Archer”

Cupid’s arrow to wound her. Again following Ariosto, Artegall, like Ruggiero wears a white-on-azure emblem. For Ruggiero, a white eagle on the azure background signified his heritage from Hector. Spenser clearly evokes this symbolism and all of its later Romano-imperial associations with Artegall’s “crowned little Ermilin,/ That deckt the azure field with her fayre pouldred skin.” His substitution of an ermine for

Ruggiero’s eagle, however, has important projections of Queen Elizabeth’s monarchical power. As with the “Ermine” portrait which displays an ermine bearing a crown around its neck, a crowned ermine is emblematic of British royalty, and specifically with the Virgin Queen.128 Such overgoing may be merely an aspect of imitatio, as I explore in the last chapter, and as such demonstrates inter-poetical competition. However, I believe that, in conjunction with Spenser’s construction of the British as the legitimate Roman heirs to Old Troy (with London, or “Troynouant”), that Artegall’s emblem signifies more.

“Achilles armes, which Arthogall did win” is inscribed “in cyphres old” across his armour of “antique mould.” Spenser’s emphasis on the ancient nature of the arms serves to validate that, indeed, they belong to a prior legendary time (ignoring, of

128 See Roy Strong Portrats of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) plate 21b and A.C. Hamilton’s notes to stanza 25, The Faerie Queene, 306.

136 course, the anachronism of the old script). Why does Spenser choose Achilles’ arms instead of Hector’s? A.C. Hamilton’s gloss on this line suggests, “The first of many references to declare that Artegall, being a Briton and therefore a descendant of the

Trojans, is greater than their enemy, Achilles” (Spenser 306). While this may certainly be part of his aim, Spenser’s inscription designating Artegall’s armor as originally

Achilles’ alludes to much more. His description of Artegall’s shield lacks the detailed ekphrasis found in Homer or Virgil, but nevertheless connects with these important epic moments. This dissertation will not discuss those episodes except to note that the description of Achilles’ shield in The Iliad—a series of ahistorical scenes of quotidian life—occurs immediately after the fight over Patroclus’ body. His beloved friend

Patroclus took Achilles’ arms and armor only to lose them (and his life) to their enemy

Hector.129 Therefore, Spenser certainly may echo Homer by declaring that Artegall, by somehow acquiring Achilles’ arms, is superior to the Greeks. However, in Homer’s version of the events, Achilles’ does not lose his arms by his own defeat. Spenser would have been familiar with the events of Homer’s poem and thus, it is doubtful whether he intended Artegall’s ownership of the Greek hero’s arms to signify mere superiority. On the one hand, Spenser may have assumed his readers’ familiarity with

Homer as well and thus additionally assumed that Achilles’ armor is also Hectors’.

That is, the armor won by Hector in his defeat of Patroclus is the most sought out, war-initiating armor in Greco-Roman history. On the other hand, Spenser may actually be suggesting a heroic genealogy that leads from Achilles to Artegall, bypassing

Hector altogether. In other words, Artegall emulates a heroic “ancestor” in Achilles

129 Homer, Iliad Trans Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Anchor, 1974).

137 too, part of epic’s “winners” “then” while claiming part of epic’s winners “now” in

Spenser’s poem. As Spenser constructs it, Artegall has the best of both worlds, participating in both Trojan-Roman and also Greek heroic genealogies.

In the third canto of Book 3, Britomart and her nurse Glauce approach Merlin requesting help for her lovesickness. This occasions Merlin’s revelation of the future of her progeny. As with Melissa’s prophecy to Bradamante, Merlin tells Britomart,

For from thy wombe a famous Progenee

Shall spring, out of the auncient Troian blood,

Which shall reiuie the sleeping memoree

Of those same antique Peres, the heuens brood,

Which Greeke and Asian riuers stayned with their blood.

Renowmed kings, and sacred Emperours,

Thy fruitfull Ofspring, shall from thee descend;

Braue Captaines, and most mighty warriours,

That shall their conquests through all lands extend,

And their decayed kingdoms shall amend. (III.iii.22-23)

Merlin tells her that it was not merely her wandering eye that brought her to his

“charmed looking glas” but rather she was “[l]ed with eternall prouidence” and urged to fulfill her “destiny.” Merlin acts as an enactor of God’s will, not just a seer or a magician. He asserts that “heauens haue ordained” her to marry Artegall, who is

Arthur’s half brother (III.iii.26). Britomart’s task is to bring Artegall back to aid his country so that it might “withstand/ The power of forreine Paynims, which invade” their land (III:iii:27). Thus, the knights of chastity and justice fill the genealogical gap

138 that would have occurred with Arthur’s death. With less specificity than Ariosto’s

Melissa prophecy, Merlin informs Britomart that their progeny will “revive the sleeping memoree” of their Trojan past. This is a surreptitious manner of describing the heroes’ “fruitfull Ofspring” of kings, emperors, captains, and warriors as a continuation of Brutus’ long dead Trojan lineage. Spenser’s history here is even more spotty than the Briton moniments as he sometimes skips several hundred years of kings before Merlin prognosticates Queen Elizabeth’s coming, “a royall Virgin” who shall “Stretch her white rod ouer the Belgicke shore,/ And the great Castle smite so sore with all,/ That it shall make him shake, and shortly learn to fall” (III:iii:49). In one of the poem’s only references to contemporary history, Spenser forecasts that

Queen Elizabeth’s greatest feat as Britain’s monarch will be the defense of the

Netherlands and subsequent contests with Philip II (as he was king of Castile, his arms showed a castle). This teaches him so that he “learns” a sort of submission to a sole leader, Queen Elizabeth. As a corollary note, Elizabeth had an opportunity to rejoin

Spain and England by accepting the marriage proposal of King Philip II, the widow of her half sister Mary I. The extent to which genealogies between England and Spain failed or were cut off by divorce or death are intriguing. Historically, King Henry

VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon was the sister of Fernando of Aragon and thus the aunt of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Catherine and Henry’s daughter, Mary I, therefore, was Charles V’s cousin and the wife of his own son Philip II. The decades of tenuous alliance between the families of Aragon and the Tudor dynasty were ruptured by Elizabeth’s refusal of Philip’s marriage proposal.

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Fully educated in her past and present, Britomart has more to say about her

Trojan lineage near the end of the book as she discusses her history with Paridell, a supposed ancestor of Paris. In a dialogic manner, the two reprise some of the history given in Eumenestes’ library, but Britomart offers interesting annotations on

Troynouant. First, Paridell tells Britomart and the rest of the audience of Aeneas’ escape from Troy’s fire. (Why Britomart does not have knowledge of this history is unclear). Aeneas went on to found Rome in “long Alba” which then became Rome

(III:ix:43). Britomart glosses his history for the audience by stating that in Rome

“Troy againe out of her dust was reard,/ To sitt in second seat.” She adds,

But a third kingdom yet is to arise,

Out of the Troians scattered offspring,

That in all glory and great enterprise,

Both first and second Troy shall dare to equalize.

It Troynouant is hight, that with the waues

Of wealthy Thamis washed is along,

Vpon whose stubborne neck whereat he raues

With roring rage, and sore him selfe does throng,

That all men feare to tempt his billowes strong,

She fastned hat her foot, which stanes so hy,

That it a wonder of the world is song

In forreine landes, and all which passen by,

Beholding it from farre, doe thinke it threates the skye.(III:ix:44-45)

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New Troy keeps the raging river Thames in check with “her” foot on “his” “stubborne neck.” As the third generation, this Troy will “equalize” the other two, a word that can mean “will be equal to” or “to rival. Alternatively it means “to level and bring down” as in V.ii.38 where both meanings take effect. “These towring rocks..I will..equalize againe,” states the Giant to Artegall.

The effect of this passage is yet another instance of asynchronicity. We were informed of Troynouant’s existence and founding in the Briton monuments and yet

Britomart informs us that this third Troy is still yet to come—a sign of hope for the last Trojan descendents. The verb tenses change sporadically in stanzas 44-45 suggesting the instability of Troynouant’s foundation. A third kingdom “yet is to arise,” and “shall dare to equalize” the first two in the future, but also now

“Troynouant [it] is hight” and her foot is fastened and “stanes so hy” upon the river

Thames.

Oddly, Britomart has no knowledge of the foundation and history of Rome, the

“second seat” of Troy, nor of the Aenean-Julian dynasty and yet believes that all the world sings (or will sing) of Troynouant as one of the wonders of the world. In other words, “Rome” is obscure enough that Britomart claims never to have heard of it, but

London or Troynouant on an island on the periphery, is one of the world’s imperial wonders.

The collapse of time via allegory enables Arthur, Britomart, Artegall, Gloriana, and Elizabeth to coexist, or minimally to cohabitate Faery Lond in mythical epic time.

However, if the collapse of allegorical time serves to place all the characters in Faery

Lond simultaneously, what does it do for geography? Where is Faery Lond? Ariosto’s

141 genealogical pageants aimed to be palimpsests of the Western Mediterranean and

England of Charlemagne’s time upon the time in which he wrote. As such, the outcome of the war between the “Pagans and Saracens” versus the Christians were suggestive of the wars being fought and leaders in sixteenth century Italy, creating the uneasy passages regarding Spain and Charles V. In Spenser, teleological meaning is infinitely complicated so long as the poem takes place in Faery Lond, completely removed and untraceable from Britain, even as Spenser insists that his sovereign see her face in its lands. As I have been suggesting, Spenser constructs genealogies to glorify his nation and queen as the inheritors of the true Roman—that is “Trojan”— empire. As such, it is necessary to analyze how Spenser’s epic geography relates both to that mentioned in Briton monuments and also to the “future” Britain predicted in

Merlin’s mirror. Most pressing to my argument is where, or what signifies contemporary “Rome” in the poem? Ariosto tethers Charlemagne’s enemies to a host of Italy’s contemporary nemeses (on the face of it, Islamic Ottoman Turks and guardedly sixteenth-century Spain). For Spenser, this is near to impossible with Faery

Lond’s allegory, for he virtually never refers to contemporary events the way Ariosto does (such as his excoriating rant against the plunderers of Italy).

Just as Spenser collapses time, geography too is collapsed and allegorized (i.e. the book of Justice and Belgium and Ireland public policy). Subsequently, as with individuals and current events, this technique permits Spenser to indirectly discuss

England. Though he does not directly draw parallels between the poem’s events and recent history, he does directly refer to real places and real rivers, but they do not exist in the story—only as fabled “Thamis” (the Thames) or “Troynouvant” (London). No

142 knight ever goes to those places, but they know of them. This is an entire step removed from the attempted East-West dichotomy in Ariosto. The myth of Faery

Queene versus the Paynim King becomes further refracted. Christianity and Islam is an utter illusion in the Faerie Queene.

Although Spenser’s genealogical construction never engages with actual contemporary Muslim issues with Britain, they do suggest a solution to Queen

Elizabeth’s heir. By collapsing place by means of the allegory of his poem, she exists in an England that is also New Troy, heir to the “true” Roman Empire. With the collapsing of time, Queen Elizabeth becomes like Arthur who reads of both his past and also future accomplishments in Briton monuments. In addition, just as Spenser curtails the genealogical pageant directly before prophesizing Arthur’s heir and then

Britomart’s before Queen Elizabeth’s, on a meta-fictional level the Faery Queene remains unfinished too. Though he most likely never completed the last six books

(minimally) as a result of the enormity of his task, the unfinished nature of the poem is ironically a solution as well. How England will continue, and who the queen’s heir will be is glossed over as inconsequential because—like Arthur’s dynasty, which continues through his half-brother Artegall—it will proceed regardless of the heir.

Spenser constructs her felicitous history as destined to succeed because of its glorious

Trojan-Briton-Saxon past. Beyond presenting the solution (a non-solution) to the continuation of the Tudor dynasty, the collapse of time and place creates a transcendent Britain as well. In the three worlds of the poem, Britain past, Faery Lond present, and Britain future (Spenser’s time), the enemies of Britain and Gloriana are compounded as well. The Roman enemies of Briton monuments stand beside the

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Paynim King and Philip II’s Spain. Naming London “Troynouant” effectively and sweepingly displaces not only Italy’s sixteenth century Rome, but also all three of the

“enemies” listed above from their respective times and places making Queen Elizabeth and Briton untouchable and all-powerful.

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Ch 3. Fluellen’s Parallel Lives: Constructing East-West English Kings in Shakespeare’s Henriad

As a mathematical limit, Gloriana and Arthur’s timeless and unconsummated romance is ever imminent, but never arrives. Spenser’s unfinished Faerie Queene provides a patchy solution by substituting Artegall and Britomart, the actual perpetuators of the British line. However, the ultimate solution to “predicting” British history after Elizabeth is collapsing time and place so that past, present, and future all exist on the same stage. Simultaneous to the publication of Spenser’s Faerie Queene

(1590,1596), Elizabethan audiences literally watched history on stage in the four plays making up Shakespeare’s second tetralogy. After the more recent history of the War of the Roses in his first tetralogy, Shakespeare turned to the events and monarchs that preceded it. Richard II (1595), Henry IV Part 1 (1598), Henry IV Part 2 (1600), and

Henry V (1600) were all performed prior to the listed dates in which they were entered in the Register of the Stationers' Company.130 Shakespeare derived much of the history of the Henriad from Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587 second edition) and in turn Edward

Hall’s The Union of the Two Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York. It is curious that Spenser’s Briton moniments does not treat the same recent monarchical history as

Shakespeare does in his two tetralogies. Is there something in the nature of that fresh history that was more appropriately expressed on stage? For the most part,

Shakespeare’s history plays bookend Spenser’s chronology in Memory’s library (the

130 I have taken all my quotations from the following Arden editions: William Shakespeare, King Richard II, ed. Charles R. Forker (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002); William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, ed. David Scott Kastan (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002); William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, ed. A.R. Humphreys (London: Methuen, 1981, 2007); William Shakespeare, Henry V, ed. T.W. Craik (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2002).

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Roman plays and, as they are sometimes called, the War of the Roses cycle). Spenser seems much more comfortable manipulating the queen’s genealogies that are mythical, distant, and safe. Shakespeare, on the other hand, though treating historical material antedating Elizabeth’s own time by only several hundred years, dramatizes history that was readily available to all and thus arguably less malleable. This is both his advantage and disadvantage. Long discredited as bad historiography (or just purely inaccurate), Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legendary genealogies nonetheless had an appreciable influence upon English Protestants who attempted to imagine ancient

Britain.131 Whereas Spenser manipulates these popular (but by then disproven)

Galfridian myths of Trojan-Roman ancestry, relative to other late sixteenth-century poets (such as Spenser), Shakespeare shows a marked insusceptibility to the Brutus myth and its significance. 132 He conveys genealogies, less as a retrospective supercession of Trojan ancestry than a result of playing different genealogical systems off of one another in order to illuminate the idiosyncrasies of the English monarchy.

Shakespeare too treats consanguineal and heroic genealogies, but in a concrete way that illuminates the self-fashioning Spenser had evoked in a hypothetical, abstract sense. In addition, Shakespeare’s handling of the more recent history of Elizabeth’s ancestor kings illustrates a snapshot of the process of late medieval and early modern monarchical genealogical construction, pausing at each king and considering him in

131 John E. Curran, Jr., Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England, 1530-1660, 16-18. 132 Curran, Jr. writes of several early modern authors position with regard to the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth. He cites, for instance, Pistol’s calling Welsh Fluellen “Base Troyan,” in Henry V that “Shakespeare makes a joke of modern people taking seriously their connection to Brutus,” Roman Invasions, 35.

146 his moment, not with a teleological, Spenserian lens. Through the theatre, Shakespeare forces his audience to see the implications and ramifications of each of the three kings’ self-fashioning for not just their heirs or themselves, but also for the

Elizabethan English nation, encapsulated in the audience watching the drama enfold.

The atemporal and atopic sense of Spenser’s Faerie Queene evidences on the one hand a sense of English pride for its being literally an island apart from the rest of the Latin Christian countries that had begun to be referred to as “Europe” and on the other hand, real anxiety. Ariosto, though he includes British heroes in the Furioso, underplays Britain’s importance in the development of his super-Christian dynasty to the point of marginalization. Perhaps responding to Ariosto’s omissions, Spenser, in contrast, sets the Faerie Queene in a legendary British place that is simultaneously famous and no-place. In the process, he reveals a larger British uneasiness with their

“place” in history in relation to the rest of Europe. Andrew Escobedo reads English nationhood as linked to a perception of historical loss and best analyzed by the question of not merely “Where is the nation,” but “When is the nation?” specifically responding to a question of “When did England begin?”133 As David Baker notes, precisely because none of the British peoples (Welsh, Scottish, Irish, or English) cites a “seamless, unadulterated history reaching back to pristine origins,[…]one of those peoples—the English—must emerge as a nation-state capable of subordinating all the

British peoples to it.”134 A large body of literary criticism from the past decade or so has grappled with just this dilemma—English origins as rooted in both time and place.

133 Escobedo, Nationalism and Historical Loss in Renaissance England, 13 134 David Baker, “Spenser and the Uses of British History,” in Worldmaking Spenser: Explorations in the Early Modern Age, ed. Patrick Cheney and Lauren Silberman (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000) 201.

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As I suggested in chapter two, the heart of “English” early modern identity (personal and “national”) begins with the issue of “Rome.” Any account of British or Saxon genealogies in Renaissance English literature cannot ignore Rome as a concept. The various approaches by scholars such as Curran Jr., Escobedo, Heather James, and Lisa

Hopkins reveal the instability of discussing England in the context of “Rome,” for it is not just a place in the Italian peninsula, but a city that connotes a vast empire, and a

“Roman Empire” that defies temporality. Following Escobedo, one might ask, when is

“Rome” for England?

Heather James’ work on five Shakespearean plays addresses the translation of

Trojan-Roman empire over time in different political and cultural situations, noting that, as opposed to the more venerated arena of the church or school, "the theater can traffic in the discourses of the established domains of social influence without being obliged to replicate any particular set of interests" (33).135 With each play, James demonstrates distinct political concerns such as the crisis of authority with regard to a female sovereign in Titus Andronicus or English colonial expansion in the The

Tempest as each relates to Renaissance translation of empire. The question of just what (and when) Rome represents to early modern writers has been pursued in various ways. In her work on the figure of Caesar in the English Renaissance stage, Lisa

Hopkins identifies three central cultural uses of Rome. First, Rome was no longer the seat of Emperors, but Catholic popes. Second, unnervingly, much of the power and even the title of the Caesars had gravitated eastward to Turkey and ultimately to

Russia. Finally, as Curran Jr. discusses as well, England itself lay claim to be the only

135 Heather James, Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics and the Translation of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 33.

148 true inheritor of the cultural authority of Rome via the Brutus myth and the idea of translatio imperii (3). 136 The first and third of Hopkins’ formulations are a way of discussing the contestation of power and rivalry between various Christian states.

While she does not outright state this, Hopkins delineates an important aspect of any study considering competition with “Rome.” Rome, both the city and the notion of empire meant very different things between the time of Julius Caesar and the 16th century and yet both were conveyed by the same term. Theoretically a “Roman

Empire” still existed, but its Holy Roman Emperors, such as the German-French-

Spanish king Charles V did not derive from the Italian peninsula. Indeed, as long as the “Roman Empire” was prefixed with “Holy,” Rome rarely figured within its borders. The city itself, having evolved into the seat of Catholic authority, represented something altogether different and antithetical to English Protestants. The plurality of meaning and time encased in “Rome,” is the most problematic aspect of criticism dealing with England’s (or France, Italy, Spain, etc.) supposed emulation and rivalry with that place and concept. For example, in Curran Jr.’s discussion of the late seventeenth-century English play Fuimus Troes, he states that the play attempts to root itself in “history and afford the Romans credit where it is due, but such attempts are continually countered with a sense of Galfridian anti-Romanism; this bifurcation gives rise in the play to […] problems in imagining and portraying this event” (Curran Jr.

20-21). While the “Romans” to whom “credit is due” seems to speak to the ancient

Romans as depicted in the play, the “Galfridian anti-Romanism” straddles an undifferentiated “now” and “then.” When discussing English emulation and

136 Lisa Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008) 3.

149 competition with Rome, criticism is often unclear just who the model/rival is. That is, sixteenth-century Britain “now” comes across as competing with Rome “then” in this particular analysis, whether intended or not. I suggest that one reason for the lack of specificity in literary criticism is a result of the befuddled representation of Rome in early modern literature, not just English. It is important to acknowledge this stumbling block (as Hopkins attempts) before parsing out any of the many meanings of Rome.

There is yet another aspect of early modern Europe’s retrospective “Rome” to be considered. Ironically, sixteenth-century Italians were also competing with a concept of ancient Rome. Though in the same geographic space as Rome, they too vied with the Holy Roman Emperor’s Spain (again as evidenced by Charles V’s title) for “Roman” genealogy. Ariosto acknowledges this nostalgia in a way that the other authors do not convey. As I discussed in chapter two, many of Ariosto’s knights engage in Bloomian competition with an ancient Rome while being desirous of being its heir. Ariosto inveighs against foreign nations in Italy taking this “Roman” glory away from the Italians who, inhabiting the same geographical space, consider themselves to be ancient Rome’s rightful heirs. Finally, ancient Rome is far from being a given as well. Does this glorious past Rome refer to republican Rome, Rome of the Civil Wars under the new dictator Julius Caesar, etc.? While it is nearly impossible to parse out precisely which Rome is invoked in each case, it is necessary to keep in mind that each author’s “Rome,” is not identical either in the present as in the past.

In this chapter, I tackle the second of Hopkins formulations—that Roman imperial power and even the title of the Caesars had gravitated eastward—by

150 analyzing Shakespeare’s genealogical construction of English monarchy. Similar to

Orlando furioso, where both Charlemagne’s warriors and their enemies alike traced their heroic genealogies to Hector, Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V alternately imitate and vilify a host of famous kings and conquerors. As such, the heroic genealogies of Alexander and Caesar, East and West, Romano-Christian and

Muslim are fully mixed up in the Henriad. There are no fixed equivalents. Julius

Caesar and Alexander seep into the histories as signifiers of not only past British kings, suggestive of both heroism and tyranny, but also project onto Elizabethan times as well. Importantly different from the Faerie Queene, however, is how Shakespeare recognizes and manipulates the collapse of time and place in the Henriad. The chorus of the prologue to Henry V, for example, encourages the audience to “[s]uppose within the girdle of these walls/Are now confined two mighty monarchies” that are parted by

“[t]he perilous narrow ocean” of the English channel (H5 1.0.19-22). Precisely the mixture of setting and theme that perturbed Sidney in his Apology for Poetry enables a simultaneous cohabitation of the theatre by British monarchs past and present.

Elizabeth and her subjects would literally be able to watch her figurative forefathers as played by actors. However, the mixture of time and place implicitly occasions comparison of Turkishness and Englishness as well. If the audience can jump from

Elizabethan times to approximately two centuries earlier, from England to France, why can we not jump between “Europe” and Anatolia or the recently conquered

Balkans, from Alexander and Julius Caesar, to Henry V or even Elizabeth?

Shakespeare sheds light on the way in which his audiences (and minimally he himself) were invested in the genealogical construction of their British forefathers,

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Elizabeth’s ancestors for how it manifested itself in their own day. Put differently, revisiting the not-too-distant histories of the Henriad kings’ strife for succession and related wars for power is integral to English self-definition. These plays are given fresh impetus when seen through the light of various Islamic anachronisms present in the plays, often read as demonstrative of mere despotism. That is, the manifold Islamic references (typically Turkish) in the Henriad are primarily interpreted through a negative lens of tyranny, destruction, etc. Scholars tend to focus upon questions of how Shakespeare’s comparison of Henry V with an “Amurath” is subversive. While I believe this is certainly one aspect of the Henriad, particularly 2 Henry IV and Henry

V, Fluellen’s comparison of Henry V with Alexander the Great opens up a more multi- directional comparison. Indeed Shakespeare’s genealogical construction shows British kings who compete with and emulate not merely past and present versions of Rome, but past and present versions of the Ottoman Turkish sultans and their empire too.

Finally, Shakespeare’s treatment of the kings reveals that the past versions of the

Ottoman Turkish sultans’ heroic genealogies and those of the English might just originate with the same figures.

God’s Blood: The King’s Two Faces

One of the most critically noted aspects of the Henriad is its self-conscious theatricality. Whether Richard II’s increasingly histrionic antics leading up to his murder, Hal and Falstaff’s play acting as himself and his father, or Hal/Harry/King

Henry V’s disguised reconnaissance amongst his soldiers in France, the role of inter- textual or inter-theatrical “playing” within the plays serves to shed light on what is

152 commonly termed “doubling.”137 Most criticism regarding the doubling of characters compares the young Prince Hal with Hotspur or Falstaff as a sort of fatherly stand-in for Henry IV. However, doubling occurs from within as well, as the loss and evolution of names in the Henriad suggests.138 (Recall Richard’s “I have no name, no title—/

No, not that name was given me at the font” in the deposition scene (R2 4.1.255-6).)

Richard is extravagant, unlawful, and inept, but evokes pity in his antics as he appeals to the fact that he is anointed (and thus somehow protected) by God. Henry IV is the people’s king, but also a tyrannical power-monger. Most notably, Henry V inhabits the drunken revelry of Eastcheap in his days as prince, but becomes a reformed and pious monarch after the death of his father.139

Shakespeare’s multivalent uses of “mirror” and “mock” in all the plays evince each king’s doubling. Having no blood heir at the time of his deposition, Richard II

137 See Charles Forker’s Introduction to King Richard II, 17. See also Richard Hillman in the context of Ottoman Turkish doubling, “’Not Amurath an Amurath Succeeds’ Playing Doubles in Shakespeare’s Henriad,” English Literary Renaissance 21.1 (1991) 161-189 and Patricia Parker who discusses iteration, duplication, and mechanical reproduction as part of the problem of sexual and textual reproduction in the new age of print, Literary Fat Ladies (New York: Methuen, 1987) 27-31 and 69-77. 138 See Andrew Gurr who sees the play as a series of loss and reacquisition of names, William Shakespeare, King Richard II, ed Andrew Gurr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 88. 139 Warwick defends Hal’s youthful behavior to the dying king: WARWICK. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite. The Prince but studies his companions Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language, ‘Tis needful that the most immodest word Be look’d upon and learnt; which once attain’d, Your Highness knows, comes to no further use But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms, The Prince will, in the perfectness of time, Cast off his followers, and their memory Shall as a pattern or a measure live By which his Grace must mete the lives of other, Turning past evils to advantages. (2H4 4.4. 67-78)

153 sets the stage when he requests a mirror so that “it may show me what face I have” being “bankrupt of his majesty” (R2 4.1.266-7). His reflections (pun-intended) upon his kingship slowly transfer the attributes that he previously had valued in himself (his sun-like qualities) and kingly majesty to Bolingbroke (Henry IV) so that he is not being deposed so much as relinquishing the crown. In the interim between Richard’s request and receipt of the mirror, Northumberland harangues him to read aloud from a paper listing the faults or crimes of his reign, to which Richard retorts, “Give me that glass, and therein will I read [my sins]” (4.1.276). Richard views his young and evidently handsome face

RICHARD. O, flatt’ring glass,

Like to my followers in prosperity,

Thou dost beguile me. Was this face the face

That every day under his household roof

Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face

That like the sun did make beholders wink?

Is this the face which faced so many follies,

That was at last outfaced by Bolingbroke? (4.1.279-286)

The king asks the “flatt’ring” mirror a series of hypothetical questions evidently meant to assert to the audience (both within and outside of the play) that, yes, he had ten thousand men, shone like the blazing sun, and yes, was “outfaced” by Bolingbroke.

That is, Bolingbroke usurped all of that from him. Echoing Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus who conjures and kisses the apparition of Helen of Troy, Richard instead narcissistically addresses himself. Instead of culminating in an embrace, however, he

154 histrionically shatters the mirror and its image. Several meanings converge upon the word “outface.” King Richard is “beaten,” “bested,” “effaced,” and finally “replaced” by the new “face” of Bolingbroke.140 By smashing his image, Richard preemptively destroys his own kingship before his cousin does it for him—the only power he can wrest from the future King Henry IV.

However, the multiplicity of meaning behind the “mirror” (which includes the noun “face” and the verb “outface”) point to two other aspects important to genealogies in the tetralogy. First, the reflection that Richard gazes upon in the mirror, while his own, is not an exact copy. As with the other failed kings that Richard evokes, the face he symbolically destroys alongside the mirror is his mortal signification of kingship with its “wrinkles,” “wounds” and “sorrow” (R2 4.1.277,

279, 291). On the one hand, this scene illustrates the mythology of the king’s two bodies. While this is certainly one approach to understanding Richard II and his reign’s disastrous end, there are inherent difficulties in such a reading. Richard’s theatrics aim to literalize for his soon-to-be former subjects, including “Bolingbroke,” what in his view is an unholy schism of the anointed status from his mortal body.

However, if this scene emblematizes Richard’s “two bodies,” which body does he symbolically smash in the mirror? As Lorna Hutson has observed, Renaissance criticism dealing with the kings two bodies—the notion that divine rulers contained both an immortal corporate body (corpus mysticum) alongside a separate mortal political one—has unflinchingly relied on Ernst Kantorowicz’s classic study of The

140 This is evident outside of Shakespeare as well, as seen in the title of Mirror for Magistrates, where a “mirror” is often in the for of a poem projecting exempla (typically of what not to do) for British leaders.

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King’s Two Bodies (and typically, exclusively the first one hundred pages) in a way that she believes misreads or over-instantiates Plowden’s definition of such a theory.141 As a result, half a century of scholars, particularly New Historicists, have relied on this fruitful, but problematic “theory” as a concrete Elizabethan belief. In a special forum dedicated precisely to the legacy of Kantorowicz’s book, Stephen

Greenblatt writes that one of the primary features that accounts for the power of the

“two bodies” theory is the “sustained, complex reflection on the problem of cultural transference or mobility” (Greenblatt, 65).142 Greenblatt cites Kantorowicz who writes early in his book, “The transference of definitions from one sphere to another, from theology to law had been going on for many centuries, just as, vice versa, in the early centuries of the Christian era the imperial political terminology and the imperial ceremonial had been adapted to the needs of the Church” (65). The back and forth of principles undergirding political and theological thought in late sixteenth-century

England—what most readers of Kantorowicz viewed as the “king’s two bodies” in

Richard II—explains the competing justification for a king’s deposition (and less than fifty years later, even regicide).

141 Lorna Hutson, “Not the King’s Two Bodies: Reading the ‘Body Politic’ in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts I and II” in Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe, ed. Victoria Kahn and Lorna Hutson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 166-198. See also Lorna Hutson’s essay where she argues that Renaissance thinkers saw equity as an enlargement of the law by fictions of intention for the public good, and that, accordingly, Renaissance drama invites audiences and citizens alike to engage in compassionate and equitable fiction-making by critiquing monarchical claims to sacred status, Lorna Hutson, “Kantorowicz and Shakespeare: Imagining Justice,” Representations 106 (2009): 118-42. 142 In addition to the problem of cultural transference, Stephen Greenblatt notes another specific feature of Kantorowicz’s study that has resonated with critics. The compelling, visceral, and sometimes grotesque account of the body, whereby the divine body contained a timelessness and continuity in itself and with succeeding monarchies influenced many subsequent thinkers such as Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, “Introduction: Fifty Years of the King’s Two Bodies,” Representations (2009) 63-66.

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While I will not go so far as to say that Shakespeare intended the parliamentary deposition scene to illustrate King Richard’s divine and mortal bodies, I would argue that he explores the ambiguous nature of divine right, which in turn figures into construction of power and genealogy as they pertain to Islam in the Henriad. The most overtly theatrical of the three kings, Shakespeare’s Richard II, builds up his anointed status by naming his traitorous subjects “Judases” (3.2.137) and “Pilates” (4.1.239-

240), thus playing the part of the deceived and abused Christ himself. Shakespeare intimates that, for Richard, a theocratic king is untouchable. Two kings later, on the other hand, Henry V has learned to manipulate the king’s holy role as well, but with arguably more flexibility and finesse (which may be one of the many reasons Henry

VIII, the first English king to break from Catholic Rome, sponsored a new life to be written about his predecessor). When Vernon tells Hotspur of Hal’s offer for a duel

(proxy war) in exchange of an all-out battle, he compliments his change. He “chid his truant youth with such a grace/ As if he mastered there a double spirit/ Of teaching and of learning instantly” (1H4 5.2.62-64).

In a far more forceful way than either Ariosto or Spenser (but similar to

Mármol’s convictions in the first chapter) Shakespeare plumbs the issue of religion and genealogy, particularly “divine right” and the notion of one son’s genealogy being anointed by God, and thus preferred over other, younger heirs. Indeed, this gets at the heart of the quarrel regarding succession and the subsequent “War of the Roses.”

Within a royal family, divine right privileges the eldest son (primogeniture). When (if ever) is the deposition of an anointed, but inept king acceptable for an “illegitimate,” but more able one? Shakespeare takes the audience through the process and aftermath

157 of such a deposition. Bolingbroke returns from his seemingly unjust exile demanding only the inheritance of his dukedom from his father John of Gaunt, but manages to acquire much more in a relatively easy and popular overthrowing of Richard II. Henry never directly asks Richard to resign his crown. Rather, with the pressure of his entourage, he accuses Richard of the unproven murder of their uncle Gloucester (and various other “sins” listed on the paper that Northumberland presses toward the king).

Thus, though Richard’s abilities are publicly and humiliatingly challenged, he is never directly ordered to step down for his faults. This is not a novel observation. As Charles

Forker notes, Henry IV is too shrewd politically “to contest a concept of divine viceregency so important for his own authority and security in the next reign, even if to do so would serve, in the short term, to justify his occupancy of Richard’s place”

(23).143 However in the Henriad, these issues mingle uniquely in Shakespeare’s use of the concept and word “blood” and its relation to genealogies.

As with the Faerie Queene, the Henriad presents a tinkered version of Britain’s great ancestry. However, Shakespeare introduces religion in a pointed way that illuminates the presence of God in man’s genealogy—especially royal man’s genealogy—and in “blood.” If kingship is ordained by God, an anointed king is a minister of God (and thus should perpetuate this lineage with his posterity). Lancaster points this out to the rebellious Archbishop in 2 Henry 4:

LANCASTER. You have ta’en up,

Under the counterfeited zeal of God,

The subjects of his substitute, my father,

143 Charles R. Forker, Introduction to Richard II, 23.

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And both against the peace of heaven and him

Have here up-swarm’d them (4.2.26-30)

Lancaster, another of Henry IV’s sons, views the archbishop’s crime as two-fold, but in the process reveals the equivocal nature of divine kingship. First, under the guise of a holy cause, the archbishop has stirred up the people against the king, what might be deemed an “unlawful crime.” However, as suggested by “counterfeited” the archbishop’s crime is also against God. Lancaster disputes the archbishop’s

“counterfeit” acting on God’s behalf as a regent—what he sees as his father’s job, being the anointed king with divine right. By this reasoning, the archbishop’s insurrection against King Henry IV, God’s true “substitute,” is also an “unholy crime.”

King Richard demonstrates a similar stance and understanding of a king’s blood as being blessed by God. He addresses the accused Mowbray (historically suspected of murdering Gloucester under Richard’s orders) who fears that Richard will favor Henry Bolingbroke on account of their blood relationship:

KING RICHARD. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and ears.

Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom’s heir,

As he is but my father’s brother’s son,

[……………………………………………]

Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood

Should nothing privilege him nor partialize

The unstooping firmness of my upright soul.

He is our subject Mowbray: so art thou.

Free speech and fearless I to thee allow. (RII 1.1.115-123)

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Richard’s intentional slur, “he is but my father’s brother’s son” emphasizes Henry’s supposed distance from the throne, in stark contrast to “my kingdom’s heir.”144 In addition, Richard stresses the fact that, while his cousin Henry is a near “neighbor” to his “sacred blood,” he does not share it and it is not equal. That is, though they may share the same mortal blood (both being grandsons of Edward), only Richard’s may be dubbed “sacred” as the official heir (and now king) to the throne. Richard’s speech elucidates a difference in royal genealogies based upon blood—the presence, almost incarnate, of God in a king’s blood.

Not every character sees blood and succession this way, however. Following this scene, in which Richard exiles both Mowbray and Henry, the widowed Duchess of Gloucester petitions her brother-in-law John of Gaunt to defend his brother

Gloucester’s murder,

DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?

Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?

Edward’s seven sons, whereof thyself art one,

Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,

Or seven fair branches springing from one root.

[…………………………………………….]

One vial full of Edward’s sacred blood,

144 Charles Forker writes that “Inasmuch as Richard had sired no children, Parliament in 1385 designed Roger Mortimer, fourth Earl of March (grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third of Edward III’s sons), as heir presumptive to the throne. Roger was killed in Ireland 1398 and Richard designated Roger’s son Edmund (then three years old) as the heir presumptive. If Mortimer’s line should expire, however, Bolingbroke (as male child of Edward III’s fourth son) would indeed be the legal successor after his father, Gaunt.” See note to line 117 in Richard II, ed Charles R. Forker, 190.

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One flourishing branch of his most royal root,

Is cracked, and all the precious liquor spilt,

Is hacked down, and his summer leaves all faded

By Envy’s hand and Murder’s bloody axe.

Ah Gaunt, his blood was thine!... (R2 1.2.9-13)

Gloucester’s wife conceives of blood in a distinctly different way than does Richard.

Alongside the host of early modern allegorical meanings that “blood” connotes in the plays, she simultaneously considers it literally as an actual liquid (as indicated by

“liquor”). In his discussion of “blood” in the later sixteenth century in Shakespeare and Cervantes, Roland Greene argues that the generation of Shakespeare and

Cervantes saw the problem of the liquid’s multivalence acutely.145 “Some of the seeming modernity of its plays and prose fiction,” he writes, “can be ascribed to the consciousness of blood as a marker under contemporary revision—the power of which draws from its literality as well as its figurative associations” (Greene 142). Greene observes this liminal moment in The Merchant of Venice where Portia, disguised as

Doctor Balthazar, demands the impossible—that Shylock take his bond with a pound of Antonio’s flesh, but without shedding “[o]ne drop of Christian blood” (MoV

4.1.10). Surprisingly, Shylock is punished in pursuing his bond not because of his

Jewishness (which would flout a city well-known for its tolerance), but rather because he is “an alien” who has sought “the life of [an] citizen.” Greene adds that “[t]he contradiction of reifying blood as merely material and then invoking its ‘Christian’

145 Roland Greene, “Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Early Modern Blood,” Entre Cervantes y Shakespeare / Between Shakespeare and Cervantes, ed Zeñon Luis-Martinez & Luis Gómez Canseco (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 2006) 142, 155.

161 character belongs to this display of inspired hypocrisy” (155). The duchess of

Gloucester teases out a similar hypocrisy in all royal use of “blood.” In the foregoing lines, the widowed duchess uses a derivative of “blood” five times and twice

Richard’s exact phrase from the earlier scene —“sacred blood.” However, she describes not Richard’s “sacred blood,” but that of his grandfather Edward (his father’s father, as well as Gaunt’s and Gloucester’s). In effect, the duchess both relies upon the theory of divine right and simultaneously quashes it in her petition to John of

Gaunt. Her argument runs something like this: when “sacred” blood is spilled by a murderer with “sacred” blood as well, mortal—not holy—justice must be used to address the violation. Edward’s holy blood, which was passed down to his seven children has been wasted (“spilt”) in the murder of her husband. The unspoken logic in her appeal is that sometimes God’s regents become tainted and thus subjects must enforce both God’s and man’s justice. In turn, her reasoning questions not just the use of “sacred,” but the allegorical genealogical understandings of blood as well.

With her description of the seven vials of Edward’s sacred blood, the Duchess paves the way for Henry IV’s ascension to the throne. The notion that if one combined the blood of each of the seven children, it would make up the originator (the father) indicates equality amongst the siblings.146 Each vial of blood is the same. Both the abstract sacredness and the actual liquid blood are passed on to every child, not just the firstborn male son. Likewise, just as the combination of seven vials synergizes to

146 See also Poins’ jibe at Falstaff and individuals like the duchess who claim to share a part of the king’s sacredness by being a blood relative. In a letter to Hal, Falstaff playfully, but also seriously signs his name, “John Falstaff, Knight, to the son of the King nearest his father.” Poins responds that such people “never prick their finger but they/ say, ‘There’s some of the King’s blood spilt’….--‘I am the King’s poor cousin, sir’. (2H4 2.2.104-110)

162 create life vertically, the spilling of one vial is like a death horizontally between the seven children. The Duchess’ exhortation to Gaunt that Gloucester’s blood was his as well suggests, “when he died, you died a little too.” Gaunt thwarts her by saying that

Richard, being God’s “deputy anointed in His sight,” only answers “quarrel[s]” with

God (R2 1.2.37-41). Gaunt’s inaction results from his very different understanding of blood, succession, and divine right. For him, Richard II is God’s minister in Britain, despotic or not and not all royal blood is equally “sacred” as the duchess believes.

Thus, Gaunt defers to Richard’s blood as the most holy because of the divine right, which he (being only Edward’s third son) does not have. Gaunt believes that only God can and should intervene to “quarrel” with an anointed prince’s bad government.

Both the historical Richard II and Shakespeare’s eponymous play had contemporary resonances for Elizabeth herself. As she aged, comparisons between her and Richard II became increasingly common. As evidenced by her comment to

William Lambarde in 1601, “I am Richard II. Know ye not that?” the queen was cognizant of the analogy as well. Prior to his 1601 uprising for which he was later executed, the Earl of Essex paid for the revival of Richard II believing that it would serve as effective propaganda at a time that it was not currently being played.147 John of Gaunt and the Duchess of Gloucester’s differing views on blood, succession, and the rights of an anointed king illustrate why the sudden staging of the play in the context of rebellion might come across as a threat to the queen. Disobedience and challenges to her innate divine right to rule were not tolerated. However, if one probes further into the divergent understandings of succession and blood (literal and

147 For more on Essex’s treasonous enterprise see Forker’s Introduction, King Richard II, 9-16.

163 metaphorical) a space opens up that encourages not only a dialectic comparison between Elizabeth and Richard II, but comparison of Elizabeth with Henry IV and

Henry V as well—indeed a way of reading British kingship through multiple genealogical channels. Shakespeare’s handling of the so-called religious aspect of blood points to the morally questionable Christian foundation of genealogies, even going so far as suggesting the ways in which “God” in man’s “blood” became a hindrance to an “ancient Roman” imperial power as interpreted (or translated in a translatio imperii) by late sixteenth century political powers.

As one watches Hal/Harry/King Henry V grow, seemingly morphing from wayward prince to holy king in the three later plays, he best illustrates the illusion of having sacred God’s blood. Upon his succession, he casts off the formative errors and trickery of his own youth. As with his turning away Falstaff at the close of 1 Henry IV,

Henry V aims to demonstrate a seemingly complete transformation from irreverent hooligan to holy king. Canterbury lauds his reformation and holiness at the beginning of Henry V. No sooner did his father expire his final breath then

CANTERBURY. his wildness, mortified in him,

Seemed to die too; yea, at that very moment,

Consideration like an angel came

And whipped th’offending Adam out of him,

Leaving his body as a paradise (H5 1.1.26-30)

This recapitulation of the new king’s miraculous recovery from “wild” Hal to Edenic king is so exaggerated, however, that it comes across as tongue-in-cheek. Apparently he is an expert in divinity, war, and policy (H5 1.1.38, 43, 45) and, by the reference to

164

“th’offending Adam” now free from original sin as well. Was the ability for such pious reformation nobly inborn as well? Shakespeare depicts Henry V’s devout

Christianity through a sort of hearsay, but he only shows it at Agincourt, where the king persists in attributing his victory to God.

As witnessed in both 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV, Hal/Harry/Henry V flagrantly caters his persona to the audience and situation in which he finds himself.

He will play seemingly opposed characters: a drunkard, a burglar, a “drawer” at the tavern, a dutiful son, faithful friend, and even his own father in the scene that distinctly foreshadows his reformation. (Falstaff, acting as young Hal asks if he would

“banish” his “friend Falstaff.” “I do; I will,” he replies (1H4 2.4.468).) In Henry V, however, he insists on his reformed and holy kingship to the extent that he must disguise himself as a common man when speaking with his soldiers. It is as though, despite his incognito insistence to Williams that “The King is but a man, as I am,” he wills the perception of his mortality to disappear.

What has been read as King Henry V’s “king’s two bodies,” in fact, has been replaced by a much more nuanced performance of multiple kingly prototypes. Though

“wild” Prince Harry has vanished, Shakespeare replaces him with a multiplicity of kings performed in a much subtler way that, I suggest, perhaps he has less control over than the tavern crew at Eastcheap. He begins a series of conscious or unconscious associations during his audience with the French ambassador. Wary to approach the king, and knowing the content of the message (the tennis ball “mock” scene), the ambassador asks if he should mince words or cut to the chase in relaying it. “We are no tyrant but a Christian king,” responds Henry (H5 1.2.242). The ambassador never

165 suggested otherwise and it is Henry who sets up the two in opposition to one another.

How would a “tyrant” king respond to the news that his request to be King of France was denied? Vice-versa, how does King Henry V, a “Christian king” respond to the bad news? I will address these questions momentarily, but first note Shakespeare’s depiction of the self-fashioning of such a “Christian King,” beginning with the onslaught of “God” in Henry V, particularly near the arguably victorious end of the play.

As God’s regent, Henry attributes any power he may have to sway the course of battle to God. “We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs,” he assures a worried

Gloucester on the eve of the battle of Agincourt (H5 3.7.168). Later, in his soliloquy he kneels and prays to the “God of battles” to “steel my soldiers’ hearts” and beseeches the “Lord” to “think not upon the fault/ My father made in compassing the crown”( H5 4.1.286, 289-291) He insists he has made a just penance for his father’s

“compassing” Richard II’s crown by reburying his body anew for he “bestowed more contrite tears/ Than from it issued forced drops of blood” (H5 4.1.293-294). Henry V’s

“God of battles,” suggestive of the plethora of specific Greco-Roman gods has a military role, while the “Lord” to whom he begs familial forgiveness embodies the all- encompassing Christian God. In essence, Henry V desires a different God at different times just as I shall show he wants the “law Salic” to apply only when it is to his advantage.

After a seemingly miraculous victory, in which thousands of French died compared with a few hundred Englishmen, Henry declares that it was God’s arm alone

(H5 4.8.107) and as though conversing privately with a military commander, “Take it,

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God,/ For it is none but thine” (H5 4.8.112). This is followed by a ridiculous amount of clarification to his counselors that praise is God’s only (H5 4.8.116-117). Finally, when Fluellen asks if it is lawful to proclaim how many were killed, the king assents,

“Yes, Captain, but with this acknowledgement,/ That God fought for us” (H5 4.8.120-

1). Henry V’s fanatical insistence upon his Christian devotion and God-sanctioned victory show a man fashioning himself as a “most Christian” English king (to echo

Ariosto’s sarcastic use of “Cristianissmi”), but in a way that aims to convince himself and the audience as well. In her interpretation of the play as Henry V’s harrowing of hell, Beatrice Groves, notes that in the last three plays of the tetralogy Henry constructs a redemptive ascent in which “the wrong done by his father can be expiated, and England, the Lancastrians, and the crown become numinous once more

[…] [b]ut Henry V is not only the glorious zenith of Hal’s redeeming mission, but also the play in which Henry’s characterization is darkest” (Groves 152).148 Such seeming paradoxes are the essence of holy war.

In the context of messianism and religious warfare, Norman Housley discusses the Gesta Henrici Quinti, which depicted Henry V as God’s champion, leading

Chosen People to victory.149 Housley remarks that,

under Henry, and probably with his active encouragement, the English

tradition of sanctified national feeling, which had overtaken the French

one as the most bullish and assertive in Europe, attained its medieval

high-water mark. It is not surprising that Henry VIII, wishing to revive

148 Beatrice Groves, Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592-1604 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007) 121-153. 149 Norman Housley, Religious Warfare, 113.

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English patriotic feeling and bolster loyalty to himself, viewed the reign

of his predecessor with approval and sponsored an updated life in

English. (Housley 113)

Shakespeare captures this sentiment—particularly the English patriotism (in Henry

V’s disguised night-visit to his soldiers)—and the notion that under Henry V, the

English were, in fact, God’s Chosen People. Prior to going to war with France, he convenes with his counselors to decide whether such a war is just. Notably, it is the

Archbishop of Canterbury who has the final say (H5 1.2.33-95, 97-114, 183-221), effectively construing the English war upon the French as a type of God-urged “holy war.” The Archbishop begins with a dissertation on the “Law Salic,” the basis of the

French king’s objection to Henry V’s claim to France. The French deny his claim to their throne because his inheritance is traced through the female line (Philip III’s granddaughter Isabella who married Edward II of England) and therefore not legitimate in their eyes. The irony of Henry V’s claim to the French throne, of course, is that his own father denied Edmund Mortimer’s (actually two historical individuals that Shakespeare conflates) similar claim to the English throne because it derived from the female line as well. Mortimer’s mother Phillipa was the daughter of Edward III’s second son (Lionel), whereas Henry V was grandson of Edward’s third son (John of

Gaunt).

Henry orders the Archbishop to “justly and religiously unfold/ Why the law

Salic…/Or should or should not bar us in our claim” and assures him that “we will hear, note, and believe in heart/ That what you speak is in your conscience washed/ As pure as sin with baptism.” What initially begins as justification for war from a priest

168 transforms into a dialogue not unlike a holy confession. “May I with right and conscience make this claim?” asks Henry. Ironically, whereas Henry V’s brother

Lancaster chides the Archbishop of 1H4 for counterfeiting God’s authority in a way that he believed only his father, Henry IV, could do, here King Henry V defers to the

Archbishop of Canterbury as it is convenient. When dealing with the ghastliness of war, the king turns to God’s other regent on earth for permission. However, the priest never speaks for God or his cause. Indeed his advice both begins and ends with genealogies—first the “law Salic” and then the Archbishop’s invocation of Henry V’s ancestors:

ARCHBISHOP. Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire’s tomb,

From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,

And your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince,

Who on the French ground played a tragedy,

Making defeat on the full power of France,

Whiles his most mighty father on a hill

Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp

Forage in blood of French nobility. (H5 1.2.103-110)

God has vanished completely from the Archbishop’s exhortation. Indeed, concluding the Archbishop’s justification for a holy war is his emphatic recollection of the great deeds of Henry’s English ancestors against the French, not God’s preemptive absolution. Instead of baptismal language of rebirth (Henry’s request to the

Archbishop for words “washed/ As pure as sin with baptism), the Archbishop reverses the construction of a nobleperson’s “sacred blood” from Richard II, praising the

169 younger Edward’s spilling and cannibalistic “forag[ing]” in the blood of French noblemen. The only moment where religious and genealogical justification of war overlap occurs when the Archbishop calls upon the Book of Numbers, arguing that daughters should inherit over sons (H5 1.2.98-100). The Archbishop exemplifies the dubious grounds upon which the British monarchs based both inheritance and war, and the extent to which they are often indistinguishable in their aims. Indeed, in the case of the Archbishop’s exhortation, the mortal resonance and literality of blood in genealogy is ironically of paramount importance to the “sacred blood” of Richard II and Henry IV, Parts I & II. Just as the term “holy war” is a seemingly paradoxical misnomer and as the duchess demonstrated with regard to “sacred blood” gone awry, the ambitions of mortals may be manipulated in the name of God when convenient. As with the “law Salic,” Shakespeare shows that genealogical construction is selective in the context of Christianity.

Indeed, Muslim-Christian holy war lingers as a backdrop in all four of the plays. One recalls Henry IV’s vow to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a penitential way of “wash[ing] this blood off from my guilty hand” at the end of

Richard II (5.6.48).

Henry IV’s goal remains in 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV, but his motivations for traveling to Jerusalem change. At the opening of the former play, King Henry IV proposes to go to Jerusalem in order to redirect his citizens’ attention away from civil quarrels, but with the tandem goal of “chas[ing] these pagans in those holy fields/Over whose acres walked those blessed feet” (1H4 1.1.18-27). “These pagans” indicates both a temporal and spatial nearness that contrasts with the spatial distance and

170 temporality of “those holy fields” of Jerusalem and “those blessed feet” of Christ. In turn, the contrasting adjectives point to the urgency and relevancy of “chas[ing] the pagans” despite the incredible distance, but also because they might obscure the power of Christ’s waning presence (as indicated by “those.”)

From spiritual quest, to diversion, to holy war against “pagans,” the Holy Land remains a fixed point around which all action revolves. Even in the second part of

Henry IV, though his journey to Jerusalem is indefinitely postponed because of civil strife (3.2.106-108), the king realizes that he will still die in “Jerusalem,” merely a room at Westminster Abbey. Shakespeare literalizes the cross-purposes of war in the

Holy Land with this invention. The empty room, one of many in the Abbey, is an ironic symbol of the offhand declarations to free Jerusalem from “pagans” so common from the medieval period through to the early seventeenth century. Indeed, Torquato

Tasso stages his epic Gerusalemme liberata in the Holy Land at the time of the first crusade because, I would argue, it was the last time that Christians successfully

“freed” or gained the city. As seen in many medieval texts (particularly crusades romance), diverse Christian powers since then aimed to return “there”—more to an abstract goal than a specific geographical location.150 Within the Iberian Joachimist tradition, in the interim of time between Henry IV and Elizabeth, Jerusalem held an allure as well. Of the eleven prophecies dealing with Fernando of Aragon, all but one

150 Housley discusses the Joachimist prophecy related to certain messianic individuals—the “New David” and the Encubierto (“the concealed one”) who were to reform the church, recapture Jerusalem, and convert the “infidels and Jews” (76). Citing Alain Milhou’s work, he writes that even the discoverer Colombus, for example, was situated at the mid point of a long trajectory concerned with the Holy Land. “The discoverer’s obsession with the recovery of the city of Jerusalem can only be understood within the context of the central place which it held within the Iberian Joachimist tradition” Housley, Religious Warfare, 77.

171 incorporated the conquest of Jerusalem.151 And yet, as seen by Machiavelli’s remarks regarding Spain’s wars in the Italian peninsula, Fernando “made use of religious” as

“a cloak not just when he attacked Muslims in Granada and North Africa, but also in his Italian and French wars.”152 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had been prophesized to be a sort of Joachimist messiah, a “New David” or “el Encubierto” ‘the concealed one’ to take up Fernando’s mantle (Housley 77). Likewise, on his deathbed, the elder Henry advises his son to pursue his unfulfilled purpose to go to the Holy

Land. “Therefore, my Harry,” he says, “Be it thy course to busy giddy minds/ With foreign quarrels” (2H4 4.5.212-214). With the king’s death in “Jerusalem,”

Shakespeare draws attention to the dual causes of fighting for God and what might be termed fighting for the patria. Henry IV never goes to the Holy Land because the principles girding his quest always lay in the politics of his nation. Both Henries’ ultimate professed goal is to combat Islamic forces (whether in Jerusalem or

Constantinople). By the end of Henry V, the young king has his “Jerusalem” too, but this time it is a city called Constantinople.

From Jerusalem to Constantinople

Despite dedicating an entire book to “Holiness,” Spenser (purposefully?) avoids directly responding to genealogical questions regarding divine right. This is ironic in a way because, on the other hand, Spenser literalizes holy war through

151 Ibid, 77-78. See also Alain Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad mesiánica en el ambiente franciscanista español (Valladolid: Casa-Museo de Colón Seminario Americanista de la Universidad de Valladolid, 1983) 391-4. 152 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Q. Skinner and R. Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 76-77.

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Redcrosse/St. George, the knight of Holiness. As I have been arguing with the

Henriad, divine right is both the authorizing and nullifying aspect of medieval and early modern conquest. Indeed, it goes through several iterations in nomenclature, from holy war to jihad.

By 1397, under Sultan Bayezid’s relentless siege of Constantinople, the

Byzantine Holy Roman Emperor Manuel sought help from abroad. He went to Venice,

Paris, and finally on December 21, 1400 arrived in London and was escorted into the city by King Henry IV himself.153 Caroline Finkel writes that the exotic appearance of his suite of bearded priests was a cause of wonder wherever they went during the two months of their visit and that Manuel’s evident piety and sincerity won him sympathy to his cause (Finkel 27). Adam of Usk, a contemporary English chronicler observed their similar dress, robes, long hair, and devotion. Manuel was accorded every courtesy and was convinced that the assistance he requested in resisting Bayezid would be forthcoming. However, as Finkel puts it, “the money collected for Manuel throughout England seemed to have disappeared (and the matter of its disappearance was still being investigated in 1426)” (27). Even when a seemingly “Christian” cause—the actual clash of Byzantine Christian and Islamic Turkish powers—came knocking upon England’s door, the historical Henry IV waffled between civil war and an illusory holy war in Jerusalem, as opposed to assisting Holy Roman Emperor

Manuel.

As England’s new monarch, Henry V takes up his father’s mantle, indeed

“bus[ying] giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” but he only goes so far as to cross the

153 Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 27.

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English Channel. At this time, the attention of Bayezid’s armies had turned to Ankara where they were defeated by the famous Tamurlane, a loss whose subject matter was taken up by many authors, poets, and dramatists. The 1453 Fall (or “conquest” as the

Ottoman Turks called it) of Constantinople was not yet a reality, nor did it appear that it would ever be so. Nonetheless, following history, Shakespeare redirects the British kings’ locus for holy war with Islam from Jerusalem to Constantinople with the final scene of Henry V, where Henry V proposes that his and Katherine’s yet-to-be- conceived child will fight the Turks in Constantinople (5.2.202-8). Throughout the

Henriad, and not just in Richard II, Shakespeare is clever with how he treats anointed kingship because he compares “holy” Henry V with a pagan directly (Alexander), a pagan indirectly (Julius Caesar and also his father Henry IV with such dictatorship and tyranny) and with Amurath, a Muslim Turk, much of which can be viewed through the shift from Jerusalem to Constantinople.

To return to Henry’s retort to the Dauphin’s ambassador, how would a non-

Christian tyrant king act? Would he be a Bayezid, threatening Constantinople? In his study of what he terms “East-West palimpsests,” Jonathan Gil Harris offers what might read as an answer to this question. Harris analyzes the Henriad by means of what he calls a “politics of intertheatricality” concerned with the material culture of the stage—the “working and reworking of theatrical matter, including the actor’s body and accessories” (69). Unlike readings of the Henriad which take into account, for instance, historical treatises on Amurath related to Turkish kings of the time, Harris follows Marxist critic Robert Weimann who proposes an alternative understanding of theatrical performance and regards it as “its own semiautonomous semiotic field,

174 requiring special methods of critical analysis that are sensitive to the polychromic and multi-temporal spaces of the premodern stage” (70).154 Harris claims that the palimpsests are most legible in the plays’ ambivalent identifications of their English characters with a string of oriental despots from antiquity to more recent times. He lists Cambyses, Herod, Tamurlane, and Amurath as prototypes of “oriental” tyrants whose histrionic behavior is recycled across early modern plays including

Shakespeare’s. Citing the well-known antics of Edward Alleyn (who famously played

Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine”) he sees each eastern “despot” as both a repetition and also succession of the next. Falstaff plays various Cambyses from recent drama. Henry’s

Herod is recycled from Corpus Christi cycle plays based upon the Slaughter of the

Innocents. In his demand that the town of Harfleur surrender, Henry V begins with a series of questions,

KING. What is it then to me if impious war,

Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,

Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats

Enlinked to waste and desolation?

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,

154 The aforementioned analysis based on other contemporary, historical tracts would be a brand of New Historicism. One problem, of course, with basing readings of early modern plays upon a “politics of intertheatricality,” is that it is ironically reliant upon the same historical pamphlets and treatises as a scholar working within more of a “New Historicist” paradigm. That is, Harris purports to compare the bodily actions and gestures of actors for how they produce a prototypes of “oriental despots,” but his only evidence to support such an interesting method is reliant upon stage directions (“he stomps, rants, and rages”) or pamphlets indicating that a person “stomped and raged” like a Tamburlaine. Jonathan Gil Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). See also Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, ed. Robert Schwartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

175

If your pure maidens fall into the hand

Of hot and forcing violation?

What rein can hold licentious wickedness

When down the hill he holds his fierce career? (H5 3.3.17-23)

In all of his questions, he shifts the agency from himself to other abstract destroyers:

“impious war,” the “prince of fiends,” “licentious wickedness,” and the citizens of

Harfleur themselves. All of these conquering powers would unavoidably come in an onslaught were they not held back in a subjunctive space by the king. He makes it clear that though it would not be his order that these powers rape women or pillage the town, it is within his ability to detain them. He advises them to be glad that his soldiers are in his command because,

KING. If not, why, in a moment look to see

The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand

Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,

Your fathers taken by the silver beards,

And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,

Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,

Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused

Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry

At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. (H5 3.3.33-41)

In the most disturbingly gruesome part of the play, Henry V taunts and threatens what he could do (and what not he, but “those” powers would do) if Harfleur refuses to surrender. “If not” suspends all of the horrors that a “tyrant king” could bring upon

176 them. The irony of evoking this particular infamous king is that Herod’s carnage occurs in Bethlehem (only several miles from Jerusalem), the Holy Land where his father wanted to go to engage with Herod-like tyrants. Henry effectively brings the

Holy Land to his own foreign war in France, but reverses the terms so that the French are the Innocents, his soldiers Herod’s “bloody-hunting slaughtermen,” and by implication, he would be Herod, constructing and preserving his genealogy in the bloodiest of terms.

However, Henry V is adamantly not Herod. He quickly retracts from his elaborately gory threats to give pithy orders to Exeter that include mercy towards the town of Harfleur almost as an afterthought (H5 3.3.54). Following Hegel, Harris sees the king’s merciful action as an instance of theatrical succession in which the more mature imperial West supplants the evoked and discarded immature East (84). That is, the East is projected as the West’s immature origin.155 Harris believes that the king’s version of Herod, for example, “demands the rehearsal of a primitive orient to produce a superior west characterized not just by its versatility but also by its sublime self- consciousness” (Harris 83). I see Henry V’s performance of Herod more in terms of a retrospective reinvention (of genealogical construction) based upon many rivalries,

155 Harris likens the Henriad to Georg Hegel’s Philosophy of History where “The Sun—the Light—rises in the East…The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History.” Also, “Hegel imagines the orient less as Europe’s other than as its immature theatrical origin’ hence occidental spirit is, fundamentally, oriental Spirit captured, canceled, and transcended—the tripartite dialectical process that Hegel calls ‘Aufhebung,’” Untimely Matter, 84-85.

177 one of which is a poorly informed rivalry with the Ottoman East, following an even less well-known “Jerusalem.”156

However, Shakespeare’s dramatization of the Battle of Agincourt is not yet concluded. I would note that even in Harris’ analysis of the play, he assumes facile parallels of Christian-West and Muslim-East in terms that Shakespeare himself does not imply. Shakespeare does, however, imply in Henry V’s dichotomy of “tyrant” versus “Christian king” that a tyrant king is antithetical to Christianity, meaning both that a Christian king is not a tyrant and also that a tyrant king is other than

Christian.157 From the above scene evoking the infamous biblical tyrant we see the sketches of how Henry believes a Christian king—he himself—can and should act.

Histrionic and macabre threats are acceptable (perhaps even desirable), so long as the king’s actions are merciful and righteous. As we have seen during and after the battle,

Henry is effusive in his praise of God and God’s role in their victory. What does it mean to suddenly attribute all success to God after the menacing threat to the people of Harfleur, “if not…”? Does it go beyond gratitude for his position as king? Why are the English the Chosen Ones over the equally Catholic French?158 Knowingly or not,

Shakespeare demonstrates a type of retrospective genealogical construction of

156 Matthew Birchwood claims that there was unprecedented awareness in London of affairs in Istanbul based upon growing cultural contact with East in the later period from 1640-1685. His comprehensive introduction surveys recent literary and historical criticism that acknowledges the areas of trade and cooperation between England and the Ottoman Empire, Staging Islam in England: Drama and Culture 1640-1685, 1-20. For English captivity narratives which also deal with Ottoman Turks, however, see Daniel J. Vitkus, Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption. 157 See also Benedict Robinson for a similar reading of the “Christian king”, “Harry and Amurath” Shakespeare Quarterly 60.4 (2009) 420. 158 For examples of retrospective genealogical construction of Protestant roots, see chapter 2, “The One True Church” in Curran Jr., Roman Invasions, 37-86 and chapter 1, “Traitorous Martyrs, or A History to Forget?” in Escobedo, Nationalism and Historical Loss in Renaissance England, 25-44.

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Protestant kingship. As Shakespeare’s Henry pushes for a war with people—indeed blood relatives—of his same faith, he somehow retains a conviction that his war is justified and sanctioned by God. As seen in Henry VIII’s sponsoring a new life of

Henry V, Shakespeare seems to suggest that Henry and his English people are better

Catholics. That is, they are nascent Protestants.

Henry V’s brief portrayal of Herod resembles another famous tyrant king of the Henriad, “Amurath.” Shortly after the death of his father in 1 Henry 4, the new king Henry V addresses his brothers,

KING. Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear.

This is the English, not the Turkish court;

Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,

But Harry Harry. (1H4 5.2.46-48)

Shakespeare’s reference to the “Turkish court” conflates several “Amurath” sultans.

Some scholars believe that Shakespeare anachronistically refers to 1596, when Sultan

Mehmed III consolidated his succession to Murad III, “Amurath,” (who also had his brothers killed upon succession) by ordering the strangling of no fewer than nineteen brothers.159 Others believe the family context of the speech and the chronology of the play suggested Murad I (d.1389) and of whose recounted cruelty to his son and hatred of his brother Henry would have been aware.160

The succeeding sultans to Murad I were the aforementioned Bayezid, Mehmed

I, and then Murad II and Mehmed II (respectively known as “Amurath” and

159 Hillman, “’Not Amurath an Amurath Succeeds’: Playing Doubles in Shakespeare’s Henriad”, 161. 160 Hugh Ross Williamson, letter, Times Literary Supplement June 27, 1958, 361.

179

“Mohammad” or “Mehmet” in English histories). In her history of the Ottoman

Empire, Caroline Finkel describes the tumultuous succession struggles from Bayezid

I’s defeat by Tamurlane at Ankara in 1402 forward (the strife between Bayezid’s sons took place in the interregnum of 1402-13). In the hope that such terrible bloodshed would never be repeated, the memory of these events inspired Sultan Murad’s son

Mehmed II to sanction fratricide as a means of smoothing the succession to the sultanate, a practice that, as evidenced in the above quotation, brought opprobrium upon the Ottoman dynasty in later times (Finkel 38).161 Thus, Henry V’s assurance to his brothers is not based upon a specific “Amurath,” so much as a conflation of

Turkish sultans whose fratricidal history would be immediately accessible to

Elizabethan audiences. As Richard Hillman puts it, “[t]here is a history lesson buried in this statement of the obvious: no Murad ever did succeed another” (Hillman 162).

Aside from the “politics of intertheatricality” linking them as “oriental despots,”

Amurath and Herod both represent non-Christian “Eastern” (East of England) kings who both sanctioned grand-scale murders in order to protect their succession. Herod killed infants in an effort to prevent the Magi- prophesized “King of the Jews” from replacing him and the “Amuraths” their brothers in literal bloody genealogical construction.

In his discussion comparing sixteenth-century English histories on Scanderbeg with the Henriad, Hillman suggests a link between the Amurath statement in 2 Henry

4 and Fluellen’s comparison of Henry V with Alexander the Great in Henry V.

Hillman perceptively notes that the myriad occurrences of “doubling” enable for

161Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923.

180 comparison of Henry, his father, and Hotspur with their own set of doubles from early

Ottoman Turkish history. He discusses the English translation of LaVardin’s history of

Scanderbeg (the Albanian George Castriot) and his relationship with Murad II and his son Mehmed “the Conqueror.” Ashton (translating from Giovo), describes

Scanderbeg’s great enemy Mehmed: “In stoute stomake , & wisdome, & i [sic] desyre of high renoum he resembled muche Alexandre the greate, yet not withstandinge, he was very fyerce and cruell…At length by hys manyfold & sondry virtues alwayes accompanied with good fortune, he attayned to the noble Empyre of Constantinople”

(fols. 23-25).162 There was a prevailing early modern notion that the Turks were the inheritors of Alexander’s conquering legacy and of “empire.”163 Indeed, the English preface to LaVardin’s history begins with Alexander the “Great” in order to arrive at an explanation of Scanderbeg’s Anglicized Turkish title.164 He offers what one might call Scanderbeg’s own heroic genealogy. “Alexander the glorie of Macedon,” he writes, “got the name of Great amongst the Greekes, because he ouercame the Orient like a tempest.” He continues by listing Pompey, Charlemagne, and “Gonsaluo” the respective “Greats” of the Romans, French, Spanish and Italians. Just so, “may the

Epyrots vaunt of their Scanderbeg to be the glorie, the honour, the pride, and the ioy of

Albanie, seeing the Turkes themselues his sworne and mortall enemies haue giuen and attributed the name of Great vnto him, and seeing the greatnesse of his exploits doe

162 Quoted in Hillman, “’Not Amurath’” 171. 163 Hillman writes that “for Thomas Newton the infidels posses the secret of Alexander, who ‘[b]y such good will and affection of his Souldiers…conquered all the East,’ while the Christians have fallen prey to the discord that destroyed that empire after Alexander’s death (sigs.B3-B3v).” 164 Epistle to Jacque de La Vardin, Marin Barleti, The Historie of George Castriot, svrnamed Scanderbeg, king of Albanie, trans Zachary Iones (1596).

181 testifie that the name and title of Great is no greater then his deserts” (¶iii-¶iv). The author ranks George Castriot amongst the “Greats” based upon his appended title, which he reads as something akin to İskender the “Beg.” The author-compiler of the widely published panegyrical “biography” by Marin Barlezio writes something similar, “George Castriot…was afterward for his valiantnesse surnamed Scanderbeg, which in our tong signifieth Alexander the Lord, or Alexander the Great:….For in some part of this realme, Alexander is called by corrupt contraction Saunder. And Beg amon the Turkes signifieth great…and with vs big is also great” (sig. F2).165 However, in the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, “bey” did not signify “great,” but rather designated a ranking, in this case, of a military commander or a ruler of emirate.166

One sees how Shakespeare’s Fluellen may have come by the Welsh inflected title

“Alexander the Pig” that I shall discuss below.

LaVardin’s introduction that follows the English epistle evokes the Welsh

Fluellen’s dedication to military order and discipline that the author finds lacking in

Christian nations,

What hath made the Saracins & the Turks to grow to that reputation

and honor by armes? What hath made them inheritors almost of all the

Empire of the Greeks & Romanes, but this only, that they did first

imitate and succeed them in their good orders and discipline? Whereof

they only of all others at this day are the sole obseruers, and they alone

may iustly vau~t, that they haue the true discipline in price & regard:

they (I say) only may arrogat this vnto themselues: for I know not any

165 Hillman, 166. 166 Finkel, Osman’s Dream, xvii.

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one nation besides them, who make anie account of the same. (Preface

n/p)

In this bizarre introduction—the aim of which is purportedly lauding a Christian

“renegade” (in the sense that Scanderbeg, after having been captured and then adopted into the sultan’s household, rebelled against Murad)—there is a bitter note as well.

The preface demonstrates admiration, or at least acknowledgement that the Turks have

“justly” won by virtue of prowess in war. The appeal and allure of a Scanderbeg figure is that he defies the seemingly insurmountable Turks who were “inheritors almost of all the Empire of the Greeks & Romanes.” As a Christian “Alexander” come again, in his determined thwarting of Mehmet and his father Murad, he symbolizes the larger crisis for Christian Europeans (in this case the English) that the Turks might indeed be heirs to Greek and Roman empires, and not themselves. What was the appeal of such a work for the English? The qualifying “almost” in “almost…all the Empire” suggests a connection since Britain was famously out of reach both “then” in Julius Caesar’s unsuccessful campaigns against the British Isles and also literally separated from the

Christian-Muslim wars from the medieval crusading period on. There is a superiority that comes with such isolation in emphatically not being such a direct inheritor that, as the Galfridian myth and Spenser’s adaptation of it show, suggests that England was a nation apart, neither the continental Christian (certainly not Catholic) West nor the ill- defined East.

Henry V’s statement meant to assuage his brothers’ fear, “This is the

English, not the Turkish court;/ Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,/ But Harry Harry”

(2HIV)5.2.46-48), like his comment regarding tyrants and Christian kings, not only

183 effects the comparison that he aims to thwart, but actually invites more scrutiny upon the English and Christian court. Henry V may not intend fratricide, but his comments press upon the explosive issue of his father’s rule and the discussion of “sacred blood” in Richard II. As evidenced by Henry V’s pre-battle prayer requesting God’s forgiveness for Richard’s spilled blood, Henry IV’s order/non-order of Richard’s murder lingers throughout the plays. Regarding succession, divine right, and a secular intrinsic right to rule, the English Henries resemble the Ottoman sultans in another way as well. In that succession was not limited to a particular member of the ruling dynasty, Ottomans followed Mongol practice. The question of who should succeed was a matter for God to determine and the right to rule rested first and foremost on possession of the throne.167 Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne (if one elects to call it that) is nearly identical to this notion. Succession is not so much reliant upon primogeniture so much as being some blood relative of the king (Edward) and then gaining possession of the throne. Legitimacy comes retrospectively from success, quite the reverse of how Richard II or Carlisle (who might be considered

Shakespeare’s mouthpieces for divine right as understood by Elizabethans) envision anointed succession (R2 4.1.140-142). In reality, the difference comes down to circular reasoning. For Ottoman Turks (and the Henries in their possession of England and France’s thrones) whomever attained possession of the throne, it was assumed, had been determined by God. Vice versa, traditional divine right entailed following a leader who had already been anointed—that is, man following God’s lead as opposed to claiming that man’s deeds (usurpation of the sultanate/English throne, war upon

167 See Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 39.

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France) were attributable to God after the fact merely because of success. Such possession (or dispossession) of the throne follows LaVardin’s prefatory remarks about Ottoman Turkish “empire” as well, seemingly asking, should one be like the

Christian “losers” (in claiming and defending the Roman and Greek empire) or the

“Saracin” and “Turk” winners? Shakespeare presages this with Henry V’s behavior as both the tyrant and Christian king and with Fluellen’s “parallel lives.”

Fluellen’s Parallel Lives.

The chorus to the fourth act of Henry V tells of the haggard and anxious

English soldiers who are comforted by Henry’s night visit before the Battle of

Agincourt and advises us to, “...Yet sit and see,/ Minding true things by what their mockeries be” (HV 4.0.52-53). These verses urge the audience to do several things. At its most intrinsic level, readers and observers must watch the “mockery” of a historical drama, where actors play out actual individuals from Tudor history. They encourage the audience to see “mockery” as joke or ridicule and to see the interdependence of the comic plot (Falstaff et al in 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV) with the historical one. The verses also emphasize the aforementioned doubling that occurs in all of the plays, both between individuals and within individuals. For example, in this fourth act, Pistol, not recognizing the disguised king “Harry Le Roy,” in turn attempts to exaggerate his title, claiming he is “As good a gentleman as the Emperor” (H5 4.1.42 ), either indicating that the emperor is not much to be made of or that Pistol has pretensions of greatness.

Henry dresses himself as a common soldier to deceive and inspire his men, and presumably in order to conduct an incognito probe of his army’s antebellum mindset.

185

For one night, he is a “mock” of both king and peasant, as evinced by the only soliloquy in the play (H5 4.1.287-281). In addition, this is the act in which Henry appears before the audience at his most devout, with the previously noted battle prayer and effusive recognition of his victory as God’s. The audience, having seen the evolution of Prince Hal into King Henry V, would have to determine who is the “true thing” and who the “mocker[y].” Is the King’s seemingly pious soliloquy the “true”

Henry V? Is it his boisterous and bawdy self as presented to his future bride

Katherine? Or the menacing, Herod-like presence demanding Harfleur’s surrender?

The “mockeries” to which the verses refer acquire divergent meanings throughout the play, beginning with the King’s wordplay on the tennis ball “gun- stones” reciprocal “mock” towards the Dauphin in Act one (H5 1.2.283). “Mock” is a threat, a joke, a mirror image, something deserving ridicule, and perhaps even, not surprisingly, an heir (“My father is gone wild into his graue…/And with his spirites sadly I survive,/ To mock the expectation of the world, To frustrate prophecies, and to raze our/ Rotten opinion(1H4 5.2.123-5)). “Mockeries” project forward in time to

Elizabeth’s reign as well. That is, similar to Spenser’s Faerie Queene Gloriana, Arthur, and each knight serving as an example upon which a gentleman could be fashioned, the Henriad kings are exemplary types (as a meaning of “mockery”) for Elizabeth’s contemporary reign.

Viewing mockeries as models, one could interpret this differently. As a type of subterfuge, “mockery” may also refer disparagingly to both Henries’ kingship being mere mockery—or illegitimate. As such, this projects like a mirror or “mock” upon

Elizabeth’s reign as an illegitimate mockery as well, where questions of illegitimacy

186 plagued her monarchy (particularly at the beginning). The collision of meanings in

Shakespeare’s richly unstable use of “mock”/ “mockery” suggests that King Henry V and England itself as a nation are all of these things. That is, he is a holy king, a

Herod, an “Alexander,” an “Amurath”-like Turk, and as we shall see, even a Julius

Caesar as well. Shakespeare’s British king is elastic in his performance of different heroes and powerful prototypes in a way that is emblematic of the confluence of

Eastern, Western, Muslim, and Christian genealogies. More than a dichotomous mirror image of wayward Prince Hal and reformed King Henry V, “mock” suggests the abundant nuances of a plain mirror imitation, suggesting the spectrum of imitation, parody, and counterfeit that lie between, and even outside of those two “Harrys.”

Before coming to Fluellen’s Alexander-the-Pig discussion with Gower, it is necessary to discuss the captain’s perspective. He is not the voice of the typical

Elizabethan, or even a fifteenth-century peasant.168 Fluellen is a sort of humorous counterpoint for Falstaff who, though his death is announced within Henry V, never appears. 169 Fluellen is fiercely patriotic of both his Welsh and British heritages (if the

168 Indeed, I follow Heather James’ suggestion of Michael Williams as Shakespeare’s ideal audience, Henry V’s doubting, but loyal subject, Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics and the Translation of Empire, 35. 169 In his study on Machiavellianism in the Henriad, Grady sees the Alexander the Pig scene as detailing the horrors of conquest and one of the anti-Machiavellian materials in the play which make up its political unconscious, “We remember that Falstaff’s death, according to his boon companions, was a direct result of his rejection by the King, so that the comparison is even more apt than Fluellen is aware. And this moment of vertiginous undermining of the play’s major ideology and subtext is reminiscent of Falstaff in one crucial way: with his inadvertent and apparently unintended diagnosis of the horrors of wars of conquest, Fluellen, who has up to this point been a figure much more reminiscent of Falstaff’s old nemesis the Lord Chief Justice than of the transgressive Sir John himself, surprisingly fills Falstaff’s large shoes by enunciating the play’s most pointed moment of ideological subversion.” Hugh Grady, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Montaigne: Power and Subjectivity from Richard II to Hamlet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 239.

187 two are considered separable). 170 In his essay on Welshness in the Henriad, Terrence

Hawkes explains that some of the most “English” historical figures were Welsh

(including King Arthur) and that prophecies of Merlin and Taliesin foretelling the return of a Welsh hero-king encouraged those Welsh who had felt like exiles in their own land since the victories of Edward I to pursue claims made as the original

“Britons.”171 Glyn Dˆwr, for example (or “Glendower” for Shakespeare) linked himself with a long line of Welsh ‘messiahs’ and ‘redeemers,’ as seen in his superstitious depiction by Shakespeare. Wales’ alternating history as both distinct from, and yet also an incorporation of England underlies the Anglicized Fluellen— whose name recalls Llewellyn, the last native-born Prince of Wales. “At the heart of a culture obsessed by genealogy, blood-descent and complex, carefully nurtured family relations,” writes Hawkes, “the serpentine character of Welsh kinship structures seem destined—if not designed to undermine linear English certainties, both legal and constitutional” (120). This is equally true of Shakespeare’s Fluellen, the most dogmatic and rule-driven character in Henry V and yet also the one who raises the

170 As in Glyndwr and Hotspur’s altercation in 1H4, the ethnically charged clash between the Welsh Captain Fluellen and the English Pistol in Henry V suggests, no easy possibility of rapprochement between English and Welsh ways of understanding truth, nation, and history. Philip Schwyzer writes, “If Fluellen’s fanatical loyalty to the English king signifies the prize achieved in the appropriation of British nationalism, the debasement of Hotspur into Pistol and the humiliation of Pistol by Fluellen suggest the price.” Englishness that holds itself apart from Britishness in Henry V is revealed as a front covering up emptiness. As Gower advises Pistol to “let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition,” Fluellen’s victory can be read as both a “vindication of Britishness against a false and empty Englishness, and as the means by which British authority is co-opted for the service of a deeper English identity.” Philip Schwyzer, Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 46-7. 171 Hawkes, “Bryn Glas,” 120. See also Lisa Hopkins “Welshness in Shakespeare’s English histories” Shakespeare’s History Plays: Performance, Translation and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad ed. Ton Hoenselaars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 60-74 and also Shakespeare on the Edge: Border-Crossing in the Tragedies and the Henriad (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005).

188 most probing questions regarding King Henry, his legitimacy, and his attributes as a king. Hawkes’ characterization of Fluellen serves as an excellent base point to judge his comparison of the king with Henry V; to the English he could not seem more

Welsh, and yet he could also not be more acceptable or engaging. Gwyn A. Williams supposes his father would have supported Owain Glyn Dˆwr’s insurrection and not

Henry IV. However, “he delights in confirming King Henry’s own twice proclaimed, but still shady, Welshness” (H5 4.1.52, 4.7.104) (Hawkes 133). Curran Jr., on the other hand sees Fluellen and his adamancy in abiding by the rules of war as “in part a mockery of British pretensions to Galfridian glory”(171).172 As with figures like Leo

Africanus (or Sidi Hamete in the following chapter), consideration of Fluellen’s position as an insider-outsider Welsh-English commander in France expands our interpretation of everything he says. Many of the same questions that I posed regarding the real and fictitious authors can be directed at the captain.

In Henry V, after the major battle has been won, Gower and Fluellen express astonishment and abhorrence at French behavior in not abiding by noble or chivalrous codes of war. Gower explains that several of the “cowardly [French] rascals that ran from battle” murdered every boy guarding the luggage and then ransacked and burned the King’s tent, “wherefore the /King most worthily hath caused every soldier to cut his prisoner’s throat. O, ‘tis a gallant king!” (4.7.5-10) Shakespeare’s description of the events from Holinshed’s chronicles are derived from an incident where the king, hearing the outcry of the boys, feared that French prisoners would come to the

172 Curran, Jr., Roman Invasions, 171.

189 assistance of what appeared to be a new French uprising.173 This is not evident in

Shakespeare who, several lines prior has the king order every soldier to kill his prisoners upon an alarm. The prisoners’ death is not shown on stage, but Gower depicts the black aftermath of the king’s order; all French prisoners, in immediate retaliation for the “cowardly” French soldiers’ behavior, had their throats slit “most worthily,” in Gower’s view. Fluellen responds,

FLUELLEN. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain

Gower. What call you the town’s name where Alex-

ander the Pig was born?

GOWER. Alexander the Great.

FLUELLEN. Why, I pray you, is not pig great? The pig,

Or the great, or the mighty, or the huge, or the

magnanimous, are all one reckonings, save the phrase

is a little variations.

GOWER. I think Alexander the Great was born in

Macedon: his father was called Philip of Macedon, as

I take it.

FLUELLEN I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is

Porn. I tell you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the

World, I warrant you shall find, in the comparisons

between Macedon and Monmouth, that the situations,

look you, is both alike. There is a river in Macedon,

173 For Shakespeare’s adaptation of the history see Craik’s corresponding note, Henry V, 309.

190

and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth. It is

called Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains

what is the name of the other river; but ‘tis all one, ‘tis

alike as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is

salmons in both. If you mark Alexander’s life well,

Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it indifferent

well, for there is figures in all things. Alexander, God

knows, and you know, in his rages, and his furies, and

his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his

displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a

little intoxicate in his prains, did in his ales and his

angers, look you, kill his best friend Clytus.

GOWER Our king is not like him in that: he never killed

any of his friends.

FLUELLEN It is not well done, mark you now, to take

the tales out of my mouth ere it is made an end and

finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of

it. As Alexander killed his friend Clytus, being in his

ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth, being in

his right wits and his good judgements, turned away

the fat knight with the great-belly doublet: he was

full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I

have forgot his name.

191

GOWER Sir John Falstaff.

FLUELLEN That is he. I’ll tell you, there is good men

Porn at Monmouth. (4.7.11-52)

Fluellen finds Gower’s comment (“O, ‘tis a gallant king”) to be a statement of the obvious; of course Henry V is “gallant,” he implies, because he was born at

Monmouth. As Hawkes notes, Monmouth, neither Welsh, nor English “turned into an anomaly” (125) While the foreign sounding Welsh language was suppressed, the

“remote and distinguished past” of the Welsh made available a sort of underpinning of new national identity.174 Being from the liminal Monmouth, one assumes, is a positive thing for Fluellen who asks what he deems a corollary question, where Alexander “the

Pig” was born. 175 Gower immediately corrects Fluellen’s mispronounced title, only interjecting in order to adjust seemingly innocent mistakes by the Welsh captain.

These lines can be more fully understood by comparing them with two very different, but connected sources. First, Fluellen’s title for Alexander sounds strikingly like the misunderstood Turkish title “Bey” that became the aforementioned suffix

“Beg” in George Castriot’s epithet Scanderbeg. The bogus etymology describing his name as a version of “Alexander the Great” would thus sound like “pig” with

Fluellen’s Welsh accent. Much as Falstaff did, Fluellen provides topical humor in comparing Henry V not to a historical “great,” but rather a mud-shuffling pig.

174 Hawkes, “Bryn Glas,” 125. 175 Lisa Hopkins sees Fluellen’s presences in Henry V as an instance of the otherness at the heart of selfhood. For Hopkins, emphasis of “the Welshness of the past is to make it, literally, another country, and to emphasize the importance of that other country in the collective imagination of contemporary England is perhaps one of Shakespeare’s most powerful revelations of the otherness at the heart of all selfhood,” “Welshness in Shakespeare’s English histories,” Shakespeare’s History Plays: Performance, Translation and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad, 73.

192

However, as Hillman’s study has shown, it also brings in a flood of associations with

Turkish and anti-Turkish figures with both Alexander the Great and Henry V.176

In Fluellen’s next encomiastic explanation, he explains why it is sensible to compare Henry V with Alexander in the first place. In his view, the geography of

Macedon and Monmouth is apparently similar. But most of all, “the situations…is both alike” and “If you mark Alexander’s life well,/ Harry of Monmouth’s life is come after it indifferent/ well, for there is figures in all things.” As with the invitation to mind true things by their mockeries, Fluellen, like the Welsh community within

England, undermines his own speech, requiring us to double check every comparison he makes and warning us, so to speak, that there are indeed “figures” in everything he says and in everyone he describes. For most members of the audience the “figures and comparisons” of Alexander’s life would immediately call to mind Plutarch’s Parallel

Lives of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Thomas North’s version, published in

1579 has been demonstrated to be a major source of Shakespeare’s Roman history plays, but (to my knowledge) not studied with regard to the Henriad.177 That is,

Fluellen enacts a Plutarchan exercise in comparing Alexander’s life with Henry V.

Moreover, by suggesting that there is or will be “comparisons/ between Macedon and

Monmouth,” Fluellen implies that Henry will (or does) have his own life to be paralleled with the Greek and Roman ones. By implication, this exemplary Henry V

176 Hillman, “’Not Amurath an Amurath Succeeds’ Playing Doubles.” 177 For more on the Roman history plays and Plutarch see Reuben A. Brower, Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Graeco-Roman Heroic Tradition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), and Charles and Michelle Martindale Shakespeare and the Uses of Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 1990) 121-164.

193 will be part of a third tier of Plutarchan-stylized lives—the English, Greek, and

Roman.

Besides the homonymous Beg/Pig, there is an incident in Plutarch’s life of

Alexander comparable to the preceding French murder of the English luggage boys.

Plutarch recounts that Alexander and his armies held a quiet vigil the night before the battle whereas the valley holding Darius’ troops were lit up with the fires of the

“barbarous people” and with “dreadfull noise as of a confused multitude of people that filled their camp thereof” (739).178 Likewise, Henry V keeps his English soldiers quiet, preparing for battle at dawn while the French riotously and peremptorily celebrate imagined victory over the English. Upon the commencement of battle, a worried

Parmenio informs Alexander that all of their camp and “cariage” would be lost if he did not send soldiers immediately to defend it. Alexander’s messenger is instructed to tell Parmenio that “he was a mad man and out of his wits, not remembring that if they wanne the battell, they should not only saue their owne cariage, but also winne the cariage of their enemies” and thus should “only thinke to dye honorably, valiantly fighting for his life” (740). Alexander remains collected and focused upon the larger goal of winning the war and chastises Parmenio’s overreaction. Assuming victory,

Alexander is convinced that he would win back any stolen luggage. In the parallel scene, Shakespeare shows an impulsive and panic-stricken Henry V. Hearing the mere alarm, he orders the slaying of all French prisoners. This apparently overly hasty order

178 Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes compared together by that graue learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chaeronea ; translated out of Greeke into French by Iames Amyot ... ; and out of French into Englishe, by Thomas North trans. Thomas North and Jacques Amyot (1579) 739.

194 would be the action of a tyrant king, not the same king who, despite menacing and gory speech, showed mercy in his actions towards Harfleur.

For those familiar with Plutarch’s account, Fluellen hones in on Henry V’s contrasting rashness. After telling Gower that Harry of Monmouth’s life follows

Alexander’s “indifferent well,” he emphasizes one of the nastiest bits of Alexander’s life—his intoxicated murder of his best friend Clytus. When Gower objects, “Our king

[…] never killed/any of his friends,” Fluellen responds with complicated syntax and logic. The irony of Fluellen’s revisionist parallel life relates to his protestations that the title “pig” is equal to “the great,” “the mighty,” “the huge,” and “the magnanimous,”—that is they are “all one.” He claims that he sees everything as black or white and never in gradients of “great.” There are only two options: bad and good.

However, he selects one of the most equivocal and nuanced heroes with which he can compare his king. Plutarch depicts Alexander as noble, disgraceful, thoughtful, rash, wise, impulsive, abstemious, and yet sometimes inebriated. Brower prefaces his discussion of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with North’s version of Plutarch’s parallel lives and notes that, for North, ambition was “the last infirmity of the noble mind,” and added a marginal gloss that “Alexander coveted honor.”179 North’s comments shows that, while his ambition may have been taken as a vice, as an exemplary figure,

Alexander’s early modern appeal lay in his prowess as a conqueror and for holding, at one time, one of the largest empires in the world, not his personal relationships.180

179 Reuben A. Brower, Hero and Saint, 208-9. 180 John Roe has a similar reading of North’s/Plutarch’s interpretation of Caesar’s ambition in “’Character’ in Plutarch and Shakespeare: Brutus, Julius Caesar, and Marc Antony” in Shakespeare and the Classics, ed. Charles Martindale and A.B. Taylor ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 176-7.

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Fluellen’s (purposefully or accidentally) badly paralleled comparison of Alexander and Clytus with Harry and Falstaff draws attention to both rulers’ spotty personal lives. Another way of analyzing the mention of Alexander’s murder of Clytus, is that

Fluellen proposes revisionary history that veers from Alexander’s huge drunken mistake. “As Alexander killed his friend Clytus, being in his ales and his cups, so also

Harry Monmouth, being in/ his right wits and his good judgements, turned away/ the fat knight with the great-belly doublet.” The essence of Fluellen’s “figures and comparisons” is that, in this instance, they are utterly incomparable. As far as

Shakespeare shows us, Henry V is not a drunkard. For all of Fluellen’s protestation against the possibility of a spectrum of meanings for “great” (or “Pig”), he relies on just such flexibility in his paralleled lives. To “kill” one friend is analogous to “turning away” another. What one performed in a drunken “rage,” another did sober and in his

“right wits.” In other words, Alexander and Henry V do not appear alike at all.

However, there is the preceding parallel story of the stolen luggage where the two leaders had reversed responses in temperament. Returning to his assessment that “all

[are] one,” Fluellen suggests that simply resembling something is equivalent to being it. His final remark can be thought of as both sincere and facetious. In response to

Gower’s identification of the “fat knight…full of jests, and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks” as Falstaff, he simply and (for once) succinctly affirms, “That is he. I’ll tell you, there is good men/ Porn at Monmouth.” At an inter-theatrical level, Fluellen approves of Falstaff’s own deposition since he has taken his comedic place. Within the play, given his reputation for military order (“there is no tiddle-taddle nor/ pibble- pabble in Pompey’s camp” (H5 4.1.71-72), he certainly approved of Henry’s disposal

196 of his irreverent and rabble-rousing friend. However, we are left with the question of what Fluellen overtly or subversively meant in his paralleling the lives of Alexander and King Henry V. Of all the characters in the play, Fluellen appears the best versed in

Roman, Greek, and British history so, although loquacious, he is not ignorant. His potentially slanderous comparison of his king with Alexander cannot be considered merely an innocent mistake. What began as a complementary comparison ended as an unglossed moral lesson. Is Alexander an exemplary figure to be emulated? Despite (or because of) differences, does Henry follow him in his heroic genealogy, so to speak?

What does it mean to call Alexander and Henry a “pig?”

Behind Fluellen’s jagged parallel lives is the shadow of Julius Caesar. Just as the audience would have known Alexander’s history (such as his composed response to Darius’ raid of his luggage), Plutarch’s Julius Caesar penetrates Fluellen’s portrayal of Henry V. “Roma is alia, ‘other,’” writes Miola, “but it is also eadem, ‘the same,’ local and familiar, bearing resonant similarities to the world of Early Modern England

[…] In Shakespeare’s ancient Rome original audiences could see strangers and themselves.”181 In the context of Galfridianism, there is the umbrage of Caesar behind

Fluellen’s idiosyncrasies in his fixation on Roman warcraft. To learn the “true disciplines of the wars,” which he deems mandatory, is to learn “Roman disciplines” from the “pristine wars of the Romans” (H5 III.ii.72-82). Curran Jr. notes that while

181 Robert S. Miola, “Shakespeare’s Ancient Rome: Difference and Identity” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 194-5. For a broader discussion on Shakespeare’s Roman plays, see Robert S. Miola, Shakespeare’s Rome, and for a more recent cross-treatment by Anglo-Italian scholars, particularly Italian, see Identity, Otherness, and Empire in Shakespeare’s Rome, ed. Maria del Sapio Garbero (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009).

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Fluellen does not mention Caesar specifically, he hardly needs to, since Caesar’s commentaries were known to be the staple of military education (172). Ironically,

Fluellen is “a descendant of the British race Caesar conquered—a race whose claim to

Trojan ancestry Shakespeare discredits—paying homage to him as the voice of authority….perhaps Shakespeare means to tell us that we should take Geoffrey lightly and defer to Caesar, as long as our positive impression of the Britons is not vitiated thereby” (Curran Jr., 172). In his other plays, “Shakespeare acknowledges the gravity of Caesar’s importance in history and by extension his weight in reporting history, but also implies that Caesar should not be held as an infallible God, nor worshipped at an inordinate cost to others.” (173) As seen in, Julius Caesar, Caesar is meant to serve as an example of both a hero and a “tyrant king.” He is given an expanded treatment in the style of Fluellen’s Alexander that sheds light on Henry V.

Although Plutarch’s separate commentary comparing the two was absent from

North’s edition, there are several moments that Alexander of Macedonia seeps into

Julius Caesar’s “life.” Most notably, Plutarch describes Caesar’s time in Spain, where he read from the history of Alexander. Plutarch tells that he was lost in thought for a long time, and then suddenly burst into tears. When his astonished friends asked the cause of his sorrow, Caesar responded that at his age, Alexander was already king of many peoples, having “wonne so many nations and countries” and he by contrast had done nothing “worthy” of himself (768).182 Likewise, Alexander had a historical model/competitor of his own in Achilles. After crossing the Hellespont, he visited

Illium where he paid tribute to Achilles’ tomb, stating that Achilles was fortunate to

182 Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, North, 768.

198 not only have had a faithful friend, but also to have had an “excellent herauld to sing his praise” (729). Per Plutarch, the Greek and Roman leaders have parallel lives, but, as indicated by their heroic genealogy (Achilles, Alexander, Julius Caesar), they are also in emulative competition of each other’s glory. Fluellen’s comparison of

Alexander and Henry V sets up another “heir” in this lineage. However, just as Caesar and Alexander cannot be true parallels because of their distance in time, so too Henry

V is set up in a complicated schematic whereby he is both an overlay of Julius Caesar and thus supplants him, and yet also follows him chronologically and genealogically as his heroic heir.

Both Alexander and Julius Caesar are characterized by their desire to be sole rulers—monarchs even—with world power, possessing what has subsequently been termed “empire.” Plutarch compares Caesar with his great contemporaries: Fabius,

Scipio, Metellus, Sulla, Marius, the two Luculli, and Pompey, but points out that “It will appeare that Caesars prowes and deedes of armes, did excell them all together”

(770). Plutarch describes a Caesar who, in an emulous struggle with himself, wished to outdo his past deeds with superlative future ones. Most of all, he desired to return through Gaul into Italy, after completing the whole circle of his intended empire, bounding it on every side by the ocean. What comes across sometimes as Plutarch’s admiration for Caesar’s quest for glory, also dissolves into censure. He begins

Caesar’s life with a preview, warning the reader of Caesar’s ulterior motives: “Cicero like a wise shipmaster that feareth the calmnes of the sea, was the first man that mistrusting his manner of dealing in the commonwealth, found out his craft & malice, which he cunningly cloked vnder the habit of outward curtesie and familliaritie” (765).

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This tyrannical purpose is well-portrayed in Shakespeare’s very next play after Henry

V, Julius Caesar. Shakespeare capitalizes upon a particularly emblematic scene from

Plutarch where, to test the plebes’ willingness to crown him absolute monarch, Caesar has Marc Antony offer him a crown three times, which he three times declines with gusto. Besides Caesar’s astounding conquests, he was best known for being the leader who transformed the Roman Republic into a dictatorship, he himself going by

“dictator perpetuo” ‘dictator in perpetuity.’ Plutarch reveals that Caesar’s “couetous desire to be called king” caused him to be mortally hated. Caesar’s supporters even circulated certain Sibylline prophecies stating that, in order for the Romans to conquer the Parthians, they must be lead be a single king (Plutarch/North 791).

The title that Plutarch gives many names—king, dictator, tyrant—is treated more ambiguously by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, since the sole leadership known by his audience was the monarchy. As Timothy Hampton argues, the Elizabethan theatergoer must choose, “between a condemnation of the plot against Caesar’s life

(thereby taking the side of the masses) and a condemnation of Caesar (thereby condoning sedition, a risky position to take, especially in late Renaissance England)”

(214).183 In Henry V, the king’s life overlays nicely upon that of Julius Caesar because of the latter’s conversion of the Roman Republic into a sort of “monarchy.” In Julius

Caesar, Shakespeare never takes one side or the other, neither advocating for the lost republic, nor the new dictatorship. He succeeds in an elegant ambivalence in the way he jointly presents Brutus and Caesar together in the play. “Shakespeare’s complex

183 Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature, 214.

200 depiction of them both,” writes Hampton, “renders them ambiguous figures and places his reader or viewer ‘between’ them in order to raise questions about the relationship between private self and public action” (207). Indeed, one might say the same thing about Fluellen’s parallel lives in Henry V, the primary difference being the distance in time between Alexander, Julius Caesar and the king. In the Henriad, Shakespeare rehearses the small-scale character comparisons that he fully develops in Julius

Caesar. With the palimpsest of Julius Caesar, never quite hidden in the shadows of

Henry V, Shakespeare (through Fluellen) again raises questions about the legitimacy of both Henry IV and Henry V’s monarchies. In addition, he presents the audience with two competing ways of reading English kingship. On the one hand, there is religiously sanctioned divine right. On the other, there exist heroic (Greco-Roman) genealogies that imply “inheritance” of nation, power, and empire.

Alexander and Julius Caesar as Plutarch presents them were both notoriously power-hungry (even to the point of murder), for both control of world empires and also posthumous fame. Adding Henry V to that pair would seem to implicate the

English king as well. However, there is the issue of Christianity. Both Alexander and

Julius Caesar are heroic exemplars from a time antedating Christianity. In the Inferno,

Dante’s placement of noble pre-Christian Greek and Roman in limbo (the first circle of hell) serves as an early example of how such figures were considered—left in an idyllic setting and yet forever removed from the possibility of God’s grace or paradise.

The chorus to the fifth act of Henry V states that the king returns from France to

London triumphant, but cedes “full trophy, signal and ostent/ Quite from himself to

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God” (H5 5.0.21-22). Shakespeare emphasizes that Henry V offers all pomp and show for the English victory upon France to God. The Chorus continues,

CHORUS. But now behold

In the quick forge and working-house of thought,

How London doth pour out her citizens.

The Mayor and all his brethren in best sort,

Like to the senators of th’antique Rome

With the plebeians swarming at their heels,

Go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in. (H5 5.0.22-28)

The bustle and pomp on London’s streets appears strikingly similar to Julius Caesar’s post-conquest Roman triumphs. Similar too to the Henry IV favoring crowd in

Richard II, the “swarming” citizens are like the fawning Roman plebeians, and Henry

V “their conquering Caesar.” However, with the words “[b]ut now behold,”

Shakespeare effectively and momentarily suspends God from Henry’s French conquest. If one looks at Caesar’s reception by the senators and plebes, one does not find a magnanimous and selfless attribution of his glory to the Roman gods. He takes credit. Even his later insistence that Antony place the thrice-offered crown upon

Jupiter’s head occurs only as a result of the crowd’s adamant shunning the notion of a

Roman monarchy.

In her study of the cultural uses of “Caesars” in Renaissance drama, Lisa

Hopkins discusses Henry V’s triumphal entry into London in comparison with not just

Julius Caesar, but Marlowe’s Tamburlaine as well. As with many other analyses regarding the association of Caesar with the Earl of Essex, “the man who would go on

202 to lead the only armed rebellion against Elizabeth I, would surely have come to look unfortunate, and to reveal how dangerous and explosive the application of Caesarian imagery to contemporary events could be” (66).184 She adds

In Shakespeare’s attempt to portray him [Henry V] in a positive light

(while glossing over potentially negative features such as his devout

Catholicism), Julius Caesar and Tamburlaine both serve as useful

negative exemplars, for the extent to which Henry does not map onto

them allows us to register him instead as Christian, compassionate, and

English. (66)

Maybe so, but the extent to which the audience remembers wild Hal, the pious fanaticism I noted earlier, such Christianity comes across as empty and, as Machiavelli accused Fernando, as “a cloak.” As Plutarch wrote, being crowned king was what

Caesar most craved. Shakespeare’s chorus presents again two paradigms of rule—a

Greco-Roman one (here Caesarian) that begins and ends with man’s ambition, and one that is supposedly overseen and guided by God. We are forced to see the existence, but incompatibility of both in the figure of King Henry V. On the one hand, Henry V embodies the conqueror-like “virtú” of Alexander and Caesar in his battles in France.

On the other, as an anointed king, such action contravenes Christian doctrine, which is the essence of the holy war dilemma.185 The ethical crux of late medieval and early modern holy war manifests itself in a figure like the Archbishop of Canterbury who, as shown above, is the play’s most vocal warmonger, giving Henry V his holy blessing for an unholy war on France (and initially more concerned with fiscal matters than

184 Lisa Hopkins The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English, 66. 185 Housley, Religious Warfare.

203 anything else). Shakespeare shows not merely the incompatibility of God in the context of classical Greco-Roman heroism, leadership, conquest, or empire, but the hypocrisy. Such hypocrisy permeates his depiction of divine right as well since the same questions that guide the English kings in usurpation of an anointed king’s throne direct them to holy wars against fellow Christians.

The last mock version of Henry V that Shakespeare shows us is a brazenly racy and confident king “courting” Katherine (when he is already assured that he will marry her). The comical scene, much like where Alice gives Katherine English lessons, has dark undertones. Her father and brother having been defeated, Katherine has no choice but to marry Henry V. What does it mean to willfully learn the enemy’s language on the eve of battle? In the English lesson, Katherine’s thick accent adds an element of comedy, but it tacitly acknowledges that the soon-to-be-vanquished

(Katherine and the French generally) are prepared for that moment, already defeated even.186 As a result, her quest to learn the English words of body parts is more suggestive of forced violation than romantic consummation. When the moment to practice her newly acquired language comes, Henry V disturbingly romances

Katherine from the aggressive position of conqueror and romance comes as an afterthought:

KING. thou

must needs prove a good soldier-breeder.

Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint

George, compound a boy, half French, half English,

186 For an analysis of Katherine’s Petrarchan-stylized, blazoned body see Karen Newman, Essaying Shakespeare (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009) 89-90.

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that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by

the beard? Shall we not? What sayst thou, my fair

flower-de-luce? (H5 5.2.202-208)

Although the king’s banter comes across as playfully flirtatious, he is dead serious in how he considers Katherine. The impetus behind his marriage is not love, but rather the heir that she will produce for him, reinforcing his legitimacy in claiming France as his own. She will not just be his queen—the mother of his children—but a good

“soldier-breeder.” His subsequent statement, that he and Katherine will “compound” a soldier boy to fight the Turks in Constantinople, is oddly out of place. First, the

Turkish conquest of Constantinople of 1453 had not yet come to pass. After completing his goal of gaining France, this momentary calm demands reflection. Is

Henry V’s ultimate goal to fight the Turks to the east? That he would enact essentially a holy war against equally Catholic France (in that it is fought in the name of God) now appears ridiculous and counterproductive if his ultimate aim is to beat back Islam.

The replacement of Jerusalem by Constantinople and the parallels between

“Harry” and “Amurath” evoked in 2 Henry IV and Henry V are the traces of a greater struggle between Christendom and the nation as theopolitical spaces, which takes place in significant measure over the figure of Muslim difference. Benedict Robinson sees the shift from Jerusalem to Constantinople as demonstrating an equivalent shift from “the politics of Christendom” to those of English nation: “Where his father spoke of ‘pagans’ (1 Henry IV, 1.1.24) or enemies of God, Henry[V] speaks of ‘Turks,’ a change of nomenclature that indexes a wider shift in his political imaginary, from the

205 politics of Christendom to the politics of the nation” (40). 187 As several critics have also demonstrated, Robinson views Shakespeare’s use of Ottoman Turks as a manipulation and conflation with Protestants or Catholics (depending upon who was accusing whom) and further sees Henry V as emptying “Turk” of its religious content.188 While I certainly agree with such readings, I would argue that in his pretensions for “empire,” religion is precisely the issue from which the “Christian king” Henry V cannot escape. In the Henriad, Shakespeare’s transition from the hotly contested Holy Land to (the soon-to-be contested) Constantinople implicates Greco-

Roman heroic genealogies in the name of Muslim or Christian religion.

As I noted in previous chapters, more than one Turkish sultan named and styled himself as Kaiser or Caesar. Indeed the two primary historical hero-warriors most emulated by the Turkish sultanate were Alexander and Caesar (whether Julius or

Augustus). At the time of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Venetian

Niccolò Sagundino reported that Mehmed II was fascinated by “the Spartans, the

Athenians, the Romans and the Carthaginians, but that he identified above all with

Alexander of Macedon and Julius Caesar” (157).189 Mehmed, the same nemesis of

187 Benedict Anderson, “Harry and Amurath,” 420. 188 See Daniel Vitkus’ Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean 1570-1630 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton’s Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East & West; Benedict Robinson’s Islam and Early Modern English Literature: The Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton, 11–16, 19– 26, 57–60, 84–86, 108–12, 145–46, 178–81 and Ania Loomba’s, “Periodization, Race, and Global Contact,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 595– 620. Robinson adds that, “In our own moment, Islam absorbs much of the burden of a new confrontation with concepts and histories of secularity. This is in part because, already in the early modern period, Islam lay at the center of a discursive crisis in Western Christian political theology, one that decisively shaped an emergent idea of Europe defined by its division into multiple, competing nations and by the constantly shifting balance of power between them,” Robinson, “Harry and Amurath, 404. 189 Caroline Finkel, “’The Treacherous Cleverness of Hindsight’: Myths of Ottoman Decay,” Re-Orienting the Renaissance, 57-8 and Niccolò Sagudino, “Orazione al serenissimo principe

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Scanderbeg, overtly constructed his own heroic genealogy to promote identification of himself with great warriors of the past. Like Alexander rhapsodizing about Achilles, or Julius Caesar about Alexander, Mehmed too emulates and competes with these past

“forefathers.” Finkel writes that,

on his way to win Lesbos from the Venetians in 1462 he visited Troy,

where he viewed the ruins, noted the advantageous location of the site,

enquired about the tombs of the heroes of the siege—Achilles and Ajax

and others—and reportedly remarked that they had been fortunate

indeed to have been extolled by a poet such as Homer. Soon after, he

had both the Iliad and the standard life of Alexander—Arrian’s

Anabasis of Alexander the Great and the Indica—copied for his library.

Like Mehmed, Süleyman I wanted to take Rome and reunite East and

West. (Finkel 157-8)

In addition, approximately 60 years after the conquest of Constantinople, Sultan Selim

I sent a letter to the Mamluk sultan Tuman Bay, just prior to seizing Cairo in 1517. ‘It has been revealed to me,’ Selim wrote, ‘that I shall become the possessor of the East and West, like Alexander the Great…You are a Mamluk, who is bought and sold, you are not fit to govern. I am a king (malik ibn malik), descended through twenty generations of kings.’190 Notably, in the reported words and actions of the Ottoman

e invitto re Alfonso” in Agostino Pertusi, ed. La Caduta di Constantinopoli, 2 vols (1976) 131-3.

190 Hakan T. Karateke notes that “Selim’s consciousness of this descent from a ‘long-ruling’ dynasty opens a unique window onto the Ottoman calculus of normative legitimization at this relatively early date,” Hakan T. Karateke, Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2005) 25. Ibn Iyas, Badayi’ al-zuhur fi vaqaui’ al-

207 sultans, Alexander and Caesar-types always connote command over comprehensive

“Eastern” and “Western” lands. I pointed out earlier in this dissertation that Charles V and Süleyman competed to inhabit the persona of Alexander. However, in their work on Renaissance portrait medals, Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton point out yet another

European leader, Francis I, who aspired to be seen as an Alexander type. “A portrait medal executed in 1515, depicted with a celestial and a terrestrial globe side by side displays an inscription from Juvenal’s tenth satire: ‘unus non sufficit orbis’ “one globe is not enough.” In Juvenal, the complete line reads, ‘One globe is not enough for the youth of Pella [Alexander the Great]’” (Jardine and Brotton, 48).191 Turkish sultans viewed the acquisition of Constantinople and its surrounding lands as rightfully theirs—that is, similar to the Spanish reconquista—as a reacquisition on the basis of being Alexander’s inheritors as well. And just as Shakespeare identifies the hypocrisy behind English kings’ operating within both a Greco-Roman conquering paradigm (à la Alexander and Caesar) and a Christian one, one sees the Muslim Turks doubly motivated in their skirmishes with Christians (such as the Byzantines in

Constantinople). This is a testament to the fact that Ottoman conquest—as both

Norman Housley and Catherine Finkel caution—is not a mere factor of jihadism (as it is called in modern parlance), but economic, territorial, and factors of power as

dujur, ed. Muhammad Mustafa, vol 5 (Cairo, 1961) 125 cited in An Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt in the Year A.H. 922/A.D. 1516, Translated from the Third Volume of the Arabic Chronicle of Muhammed ibn Ahmed Ibn Iyas, and Eyewitness of the Scenes He Describes, trans W.H. Salmon (London: 1981[1921]) 91. 191 Discussing the iconography of Renaissance portrait medals, Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton note that Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East & West, 48.

208 well.192 Viewing the construction of imperial power by means of genealogies, the

Henriad also serves as an example of not just the competitive self-fashioning by the continental European powers (such as Charles V or Francis I), but indeed the English self-fashioning in emulation of the Turks. Of all the criticism dealing with Islam in the

Henriad, I believe that Jerry Brotton’s brief suggestion, at the end of his essay on St.

George is the most provocative.193 He advocates a reading of King Henry V as a St.

George. Brotton argues that Henry V is a play about the performance of an early version of English national identity as exemplified by Henry as a personification of St.

George (62).194 The ambiguity of St. George in conjunction with the repeated identification of French forces with “hot-blooded” horses allows for him to find a

“significant link” between French and Muslim forces. (63). Brotton does not expand on this suggestion, beyond the assertion that “[j]ust as the trace of confrontation with

Islam permeates the paintings of Carpaccio and Titian, so it seems to reappear in

Shakespeare’s play, where the ‘crusade’ against the French is obliquely seen as a victory over a fantasized Islamic foe” (63). While I don’t see the French as Islamic

Turkish enemies, I apply Brotton’s St. George suggestion to the Henriad to the extent that I turn the multi-faceted Alexander prototypes back on Henry V. That is, just as those figures such as St George, Alexander, and Julius Caesar signify jointly across borders “East” and “West,” so too Henry V straddles the boundaries between a holy

192 Finkel, “Myths of Ottoman Decay,” Re-Orienting the Renaissance, ed MacLean, 150 and Housley, Religious Warfare, 1-32. 193 Jerry Brotton, “St George between East and West,” Re-Orienting the Renaissance, ed. Gerald MacLean (London: Palgrave, 2005) 50-65. 194 See also his chapter in Jardine & Brotton, “Exchanging Identity: Breaching the Boundaries of Renaissance Europe,” Global Interests, 11-62.

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Christian heir and a heroic Greco-Roman one that advertises power both within

England and beyond it.

I take Shakespeare’s Fluellen at his word. As slanderous as it is laudatory, his comparison of Henry V with Alexander, and by default Julius Caesar, aligns him with a “tyrant king” or an Amurath as well, but in a way that suggests emulation even more than competition. He will rage to the Dauphin, order the sudden retaliatory slaying of

French prisoners, and rampage through France demanding the monarchy as his own.

These moments, much more than the moments in which he lives up to his “divine right” as a holy king, are the moments in which he proves himself able to follow in the imperial footsteps of Achilles, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Murad II, etc. That is, Henry

V traces his own heroic roots to the same place as the Ottoman Turkish sultanate.

Recalling the introduction to LaVardin’s work on Scanderbeg, and the question of why only the “Saracins & the Turks” gained the greatest military reputation—“What hath made them inheritors almost of all the Empire of the Greeks & Romanes, but this only, that they did first imitate and succeed them in their good orders and discipline?”—Shakespeare’s allusions to Alexander, Julius Caesar, and several conflated Turkish sultans demonstrates emulative competition beyond religion. Or rather, Shakespeare identifies the challenges Christianity imposes upon an English

“empire” modeled upon the illusion of a “Roman” or “Macedonian” one. Will Henry

V or his son—half St. Denis and half St. George—“take the Turk by the beard?” As the prologue reminds us, Shakespeare has already brought the first tetralogy, the War of the Roses, to stage, showing that France will be lost and Constantinople only an empty vow. Elizabethan theatergoers must leave only with their historical king’s

210 threats at Harfleur that “fathers [would be] taken by the silver beards,/ And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls.” The same impulse that stays his hand from carrying this action out prevents him from the imperial successes of a “tyrant king.”

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Ch 4. Don Quijote: Reconstructing Genealogies in La Mancha

A flesh and blood “Sidi Hamete Benengeli” does not exist and Cervantes is the

“true” author of Don Quijote, the “history” of the aging knight and his loquacious squire. I begin by treating him as the real author, however, just as Cervantes playfully insists that we do, to make a point. By taking seriously Sidi Hamete’s existence, I am able to analyze his literary genealogy in a manner similar to that of Leo Africanus.

Ignoring the infeasible aspects of Cervantes’ invention (such as the fact that Sidi

Hamete would have had to be an invisible and omniscient historian to have properly documented all of Sancho and Don Quijote’s deeds), Cervantes accomplished more than hiding behind a faux historian or playing with point of view.195 His construction of a mixed-blood literary genealogy for Don Quijote presents us with, inter alia, a metonym for seventeenth-century Spanish bloodlines. Sidi Hamete’s open observation of Islam flouts the policy of the Spanish monarchy. How did the Royal Council permit

Don Quijote to be published after the expulsion of moriscos, particularly the second part? Sidi Hamete’s very existence is Cervantes’ acknowledgment of the cultural contributions of Arabs in Iberia, in defiance and possibly even in criticism of the

Spanish crown’s poor handling of moriscos. I believe one of Cervantes’ primary motives was to construct a “mixed blood” genealogy of authors to highlight that the

Arabo-Islamic past of newly united Christian Spain is not easily eradicable.

195 On the basis that, in order to be “good,” an author must be consistent to the point of view he selects, Norman Friedman rejects Don Quijote as unsuccessful. He writes, “I have in mind here, for example, the obvious inconsistencies in the narrative of Don Quijote as well as the often burdensome references to Cid Hamet, the author of the ‘original,’” “Point of View in Fiction” PMLA, LXX (December, 1955), note 30, 1182.

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Like Leo Africanus, Sidi Hamete Benegeli, the “Arab-Manchegan” historian is witness to his own times, as evidenced by the fact that in Part II of Don Quijote (1615) he responds to an apocryphal Quijote that was published as a supposed sequel to his first book. When we learn of the genesis of his text in chapter nine of Part I, we discover only his name and that his notebook was written with Arabic characters. The

Christian narrator does not indicate, however, the language in which the author wrote.

All we know is that the “morisco aljamiado” serves as the “intérprete” and renders the notebook into Castilian for the narrator.196 That he speaks, directly after describing his translator in the Alcaná de Toledo, of how he could also have found a translator from

Hebrew seem to suggest strongly that the text was written in Arabic.197 Yet, as some scholars have argued, he could also have written in Arabic or rather aljamiado,

196 Miguel de Cervantes, El ingenioso Don Quijote de la Mancha, 142. All Spanish quotations will refer to this edition. For ease of reference, I will hereafter write DQ I or DQ II for parts one and two respectively. All English translations will be based upon Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote, trans. Burton Raffel and ed. Diana de Armas Wilson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 197 “Arábigo” generally referred to language, not ethnicity (“moro” was used for this).

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Castilian written with Arabic script.198 Would an “Arab historian” even write in aljamiado?199

While he may have been given the epithet morisco by the Spanish government at the time,200 the benedictions that he utters throughout the second book such as

“Blessed be Allah the All-Mighty,” indicate that he was likely a crypto-Muslim.201

Ten years after the Christian conquest of Granada in early 1492, and despite initial promises to the contrary, Muslims in Castile were forced to decide between exile or conversion to Christianity. A series of poorly enforced edicts were written in the first half of the sixteenth century that increasingly limited (or even forbade) morisco baths, dress, marriage, spoken and written Arabic, and many other vestiges of Iberian

198 L.P. Harvey, Luce López Baralt, and James Parr feel that Sidi Hamete wrote his original in Arabic whereas María Rosa Menocal, Ellen Anderson, and Carroll B. Johnson believe that he wrote in aljamiado. See L.P. Harvey, The Moriscos and Don Quixote, Offprint of the Inaugural Lecture in the Chair of Spanish Delivered at the University of London King’s College 11 November 1974; Luce López Baralt, “The Supreme Pen (Al-Qalam al-A’la) of Cide Hamete Benengeli in Don Quixote,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 505-18; James Parr, Don Quixote: An Anatomy of Subversive Discourse (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1988); María Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002); Ellen Anderson, “His Pen’s Christian Profession: Cide Hamete Writes the End of Don Quixote,” Romance Languages Annual 6 (1994): 406-412; and Carroll B. Johnson, “Phantom Pre-texts and Fictional Authors: Sidi Hamid Benegeli, Don Quijote and the Metafictional Conventions of Chivalric Romances,” Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 27.1 (Spring 2007 [2008]): 179-99. 199 Recall that Quranic Arabic was a sacred and privileged language—thus not intended to be translated. Muslims believe that the Qur’an was the word of God transmitted by Mohammad and therefore meant to be read exclusively in Arabic. 200 Again, a morisco was a former Muslim who outwardly converted to Christianity in the decades following the Conquest of Granada of 1492 (1502 in Castile, and 1526 in Aragon). See also notes twenty-three and twenty-four in Chapter One. 201 “‘¡Bendito sea el poderoso Alá!’ dice Hamete Benengeli al comienzo deste octavo capítulo--. ‘¡Bendito sea Alá!’ repite tres veces, y dice que da estas bendiciones por ver que tiene ya en campaña a don Quijote y a Sancho”(DQ II, 92). ‘”Blessed be Allah the All- Mighty!” says Hamid Benengeli at the beginning of this eighth chapter. “Blessed be Allah!” he repeats three times, noting that he utters this benediction to show that Don Quijote and Sancho are now back in action.’

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Muslim culture.202 Tension came to a head with the strict implementation of many of these statutes in the pragmáticas of 1567.203 Revealed on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Granada conquest, the rulings would be a major cause of a civil war, the

Alpujarras Rebellion, and subsequent conflict that ended with Philip II’s government expelling moriscos from Spain beginning in 1609.

Given these events, we can assume that Sidi Hamete Benengeli was likely a crypto-Muslim, explicitly going against laws that forbade the use of Arabic, including

Arabic script. Perhaps because of his illicit practices, Sidi Hamete does not reveal details about his personal life in re-conquered and post-morisco Spain. Volume Two of his novel appears in 1615, only six years after the expulsion. Does he write and publish the second half from Northern Africa? Or does he write in hiding, like Ricote the Morisco who risks his life to return to La Mancha disguised as a Northern

European pilgrim in order to retrieve his buried fortune? Sidi Hamete’s frequent critical intrusions in Part Two provide us with some answers about the author and his work.

Like Leo Africanus, whose story of the amphibious bird advertised his objectivity as a historian, Sidi Hamete most concerns himself with the truth of his history. His increased appearances and commentary in the second part of Don Quijote respond to multiple disparaging remarks about lying Muslims. For example, the anonymous first narrator comments that his only objection to the truthfulness of the

202 For an appeal against the pragmáticas see Francisco Núñez Muley’s Memorandum for the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery Court of the City and Kingdom of Granada, ed. and trans. Vincent Barletta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) 203 For more on the Alpujarras Rebellion and the history of Iberian Muslims after 1492 see David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada and Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City's Past in Early Modern Spain.

215 account “can only be that the author was Arabic, since it’s very typical for people of that nation to be liars” ‘no podrá ser otra sino haber sido su autor arábigo, siendo muy proprio de los de aquella nación ser mentirosos’ (DQ I, 144-5). Later, upon discovering that tales of his adventures have been circulating during his own lifetime,

Don Quijote remarks that, though he expects his history to expound a truthful account of his adventures, “it still bothered him that the author was a Moor, to judge by the name ‘Sidi,’ for truth simply could not be expected from the Moors, because they are all cheats, swindlers, and trouble-makers” ‘desconsolóle pensar que su autor era moro, según aquel nombre de Cide; y de los moros no se podía esperar verdad alguna, porque todos son embelecadores, falsarios y quimeristas’ (DQ II, 58-59). Half a century after Leo Africanus’ Descrizione was published, stereotypes about lying Arabs persist. And much as Africanus expressed his fear of not being believed in Italy because of his potential allegiance to North Africa, or Spain, Sidi Hamete must defend his credibility as a man of Muslim descent.

In Part Two, Sidi Hamete does not respond directly to the narrator’s disparaging comments. Nor does he respond to his own hero’s skepticism of his

Arab/ic origins. Perhaps the chronicler was unaware of the existence of the Castilian translation of his work before writing its sequel. More likely is that, like Leo

Africanus, he wrote with the caution of a man who acknowledges the inherent animosity and distrust of neighbors who see him as an outsider. Whereas Leo

Africanus was held captive in Italy, however, Sidi Hamete qualifies more as an exile.

He nevertheless begins chapter ten of the second volume by confronting such expectations, emphatically stating, “as the author of this great history reaches the

216 events narrated in this chapter, he explains that he would have liked to pass over them in silence, fearful that no one would believe him; for here Don Quijote’s madness reaches almost unimaginable levels, and then goes beyond that.”204 Sidi Hamete has two challenges to overcome. To begin with, his hero’s insanity is so crazy as to seem fabricated. Indeed, he fears that he will not be believed (“temeroso de que no había de ser creído”) ( DQ II, 103). The deck is additionally stacked against Sidi Hamete however, because regardless of the content of his history, his connection with Islam automatically questions the truth of his account for his contemporaries. Given these factors, he is forced to offer a disclaimer promising his readers his commitment to the truth of his historia verdadera (true history). In a way, such preemptive and forthcoming statements give Sidi Hamete more credibility. By revealing his initial inclinations to omit the scenes dealing with Don Quijote’s insanity—as Old Christian readers would have expected—he angles to gain their trust. Just as Leo Africanus wrote that he would have preferred to ignore African vices (but did not), the Arab

Manchegan historian gains popular credibility with such strategies precisely because he spotlights Don Quijote’s seemingly unbelievable feats while simultaneously acknowledging his readers’ doubts. Ironically, his Arabo-Islamic background—one that is fraught with stereotypes of inauthenticity—makes him the perfect author for a

“true account.”

My treating Sidi Hamete Benengeli as a true author of an equally “true history”

‘verdadera historia’ enables a similar analysis of his literary genealogies as Leo

204 “Llegando el autor desta grande historia a contra lo que en este capítulo cuenta, dice que quisiera pasarle en silencio, temeroso de que no había de ser creído; porque las locuras de don Quijote llegaron aquí al término y raya de las mayores que pueden imaginarse, y aun pasaron dos tiros de ballesta más allá de las mayores.” (DQ II, 103-104.)

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Africanus or Mármol. Most central to my argument is how he fits into two literary genealogies introduced in chapter one, isnad and imitatio. Similar to Leo Africanus’ or

Mármol’s participation in such authorial genealogies, Cervantes manipulates Sidi

Hamete’s place within these systems for literary authority. However, the narrative layers and multiple authors also contradictorily deflect and re-appropriate such authority and authorship. How does this mixed framework function for Cervantes? To begin with, chivalric manuscripts were commonly presented as “found manuscripts” more often than not in a foreign language. 205 In addition, the notion of a rediscovered

Arabo-Islamic text has a historical precedent from sixteenth-century Granada. With the narrator’s discovery at the Toledo market, Cervantes may be evoking the

“discovery” of the forged libros plumbeos—or plomos—of the Sacramonte and the

Torre Turpiana texts mentioned in the first chapter. The “rediscovered” texts have the effect of appearing as both part of a historical past, like a martyr’s relic, and simultaneously bridging this past with the moriscos’ present, and thus validating their plight. On the other hand, as Ruth El Saffar argues, after chapter eight Cervantes had to distance himself from Don Quijote’s insanity; as a result, he introduced Sidi

Hamete Benengeli (and the other narrative devices such as the morisco translator) to deflect any association with his unbalanced hero.206 Timothy Hampton suggests that the book’s mixed heritage of fathers and “stepfathers,” (and I would add children and stepchildren, and Arabs, moriscos, and cristianos viejos) also serves to distance

205 Daniel Eisenberg, Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982) writes about romances having the premise of being discovered texts in a foreign, ancient language. The Libro del caballero Zifar, for example was supposedly translated from Chaldean, Arabic and then Latin into Castilian. 206 Ruth Snodgrass El Saffar, “The Function of the Fictional Narrator in Don Quijote,” MLN 83 (1968): 176.

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Cervantes from the sometimes bitingly satirical criticism he was making of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spain (Hampton, 239).207 He feels that Don Quijote’s multiple authors protect Cervantes from his censure of the bureaucratic absolutism implemented and administered from the Escorial by Philip II and also his identification of the poverty and isolation of Spain’s provincial petty nobility. Finally,

Carroll Johnson sees the function of Sidi Hamete as one that, by introducing the

Moorish historian alongside the Old Christian second author, turns Cervantes’ text into a discursive battleground upon which two competing ideologies struggle for dominance (Johnson, 189).

My reading of Sidi Hamete Benengeli’s place in Don Quijote does not discount any of these positions, but focuses upon how Cervantes constructs the literary genealogy of his novel such that it highlights the complicated aspects of real genealogies—particularly vestiges of Arabo-Islamic culture—within Spain. While it is certainly feasible that Sidi Hamete’s function is protective (whether from insanity or punishment), I believe one of Cervantes’ primary motives was to construct a “mixed blood” genealogy of authors to highlight that the Arabo-Islamic past of newly united

Christian Spain is not easily eradicable.208 I build upon Johnson’s suggestion that Sidi

Hamete’s presence turns the work into a discursive ideological contest. Such a contentious primary author questions the truth and legitimacy of all Spanish history

207 See Timothy Hampton’s chapter “Cervantes: Writing out of History” from Writing from History. 208 Vincent Barletta’s Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern Spain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) is an example of recent literary criticism demonstrating the ineradicability of Islam amongst the morisco people. In particular, he argues that they were able to sustain and create literature that was not purely based upon resistance to the dominant culture.

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(even, jestingly, the truth of his own “historia”) as history is being made and documented in the present time. However, unlike Johnson, I see Sidi Hamete’s function as one that introduces not only competing ideologies, but also literary and even religious genealogies that sometimes function alongside one another or are overlaid in a curious symbiosis.

What is the significance of one of the most popular books of its time being written tongue-in-cheek by an “Arab Manchegan” in post-morisco Spain? By this inclusion, what kind of commentary does Cervantes make regarding Spain’s government and policy? His mixed blood construction of Don Quixote’s genealogy challenges recently implemented Spanish policy in dealing with former Muslims who remained in Spain after the Conquest of Granada, stringent edicts such as the

Pragmáticas of 1567, and finally the expulsions of 1609. I will begin by discussing how Cervantes employs the two literary chains of transmission, imitatio and isnad, and follow with analysis of how Sidi Benengeli’s imitator Avellaneda, the immediate successor in his genealogy, fails as a result of his flawed application of the literary genealogies in Don Quijote. Finally, I suggest implications of this failure upon

Cervantes’ Don Quijote Volume Two with a specific example of literal blood genealogies in the character of Ricote the morisco.

Sidi Hamete Benengeli, Imitatio, and Isnad

In the prologue to the first part of Don Quijote, Cervantes famously reveals that he is not the primary author of the book but rather its “stepfather” ‘padrastro’ (DQ

I, 50). In this way he peremptorily sidesteps the inherent problems of becoming a

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Golden Age heir to the epic tradition of imitatio, which casts authors in a filial relationship to their predecessor authors. In addition, he protects his work (and himself) with opening and closing statements that the purpose of Don Quijote is to

“shatter tales of chivalry,” (or romance) and nothing more. These declarations seem to offer us a basic explanation for why Cervantes is merely the stepfather to one of the most popular “romances” of its day. Although he purported to have mocked tropes and conventions of romance, blatantly quoting famous passages such as Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (which is, incidentally, spared from the bonfire of the books), Cervantes is rather equivocal about romance. On one hand, he highlights the priest’s and the barber’s aversion to tales of chivalry with the Inquisition-like book burning. On the other hand, their reckless and seemingly haphazard destruction satirizes both the real

Inquisition (of people) and the ridiculous aim of curtailing Don Quijote’s adventures by merely eliminating his books. The most discordant evidence regarding the purpose of “shattering tales of chivalry” is the widespread popularity of his own book, a

“romance” of a lunatic knight from la Mancha and his salt-of-the-earth squire. Indeed,

Cervantes exploits this fact in Part Two by having various characters such as the Duke and Duchess or the Arcadia actors reveal the pleasure they have gotten out of Don

Quijote’s adventures in the first volume.

One crucial aspect of romance that Cervantes employs (knowingly or not) is imitatio, touched upon in the first chapter regarding Leo Africanus’ relationship with

Pliny. Imitatio, one of the two literary genealogies at work in Don Quijote, is a term originating in classical literature that was then reinvigorated by fourteenth- and fifteenth-century humanists. For them, it signified their mode of imitating both their

221 immediate predecessors as well as Latin and Greek authorities, particularly Cicero and

Quintilian. Before 1460, debates on imitatio primarily took place between those who favored “Ciceronianism”—that is an emulation of Cicero’s Latin style—and those who advocated imitation of mixed models.209 Near the end of the fifteenth-century emerged humanists who argued for the incorporation of their own innovations (such as neo-Latinisms) in their Latin and vernacular writings.

The second wave of imitatio was characterized by imitation of the vernacular, particularly of Italian poetry.210 Petrarchism would be the most pervasive example of poetic imitatio, particularly for its spread beyond Italy’s borders in the sixteenth- century. As Bernard Weinberg points out, however, exactly what “imitation” signified varied greatly after this point (61). It involved wording and syntax (as the Ciceronians intended), but could also mean imitation of a character, a passage, entire poetic forms, or even literature that closest resembled life. However, there seems to be yet another subset of poetic imitatio that emerges to spread beyond Italy’s borders. Epic imitatio grapples with many of the same critical issues as the more generic poetic imitatio, and indeed its practice is evident since classical times—Virgil’s imitation of Homer being the most striking example. As with Petrarchism and the sonnet, one could say that epic imitatio is genre-specific and because of this, requires more exact definition. I will call the most important feature within epic imitatio “overgoing.” In the imitation and

209 Of course, there was a spectrum of opinions on imitation and Ciceronianism. For a thorough discussion of imitative theory in Italy before 1460, see Martin McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance: Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation in Italy from Dante to Bembo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 210 See Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); and McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance.

222 adaptation of a prior epic author, the present author makes an adjustment that he believes will augment or improve his predecessor’s work. That is, in order to partake in the literary genealogy to which he aspires, he must outdo his predecessor through imitatio. In this way epic imitatio signifies imitation of not only content, but of an author as well. Thomas Greene’s study of “anachronism” in The Light in Troy is a helpful starting point for understanding how and why overgoing occurs. “Imitatio produced a vast effort to deal with the newly perceived problem of anachronism,” he writes; “it assigned the Renaissance creator a convenient and flexible stance toward a past that threatened to overwhelm him” (Greene 2). In the Renaissance poetry analyzed by Greene, it is the Augustan Roman Empire that most often represents this impressive and overwhelming past. Actually, Greene’s “anachronism” is similar to

Harold Bloom’s “belatedness”; it is the humanist’s sense of not being able to match up to the perceived greatness of those people and those times.211 For humanists, this gap is inimical to historical knowledge and mere physical transmission of accurate texts is not sufficient for literary transmission. Instead Greene suggests that,

The final enemy of historical knowledge is not simply the carelessness

of scribes and clerks but history itself. Not to have seen the place, not

to possess the names, constitute fatal disqualifications for the belated

211 Greene does not specify whether “the past that threatened to overwhelm” refers to the Roman Empire, the exemplary model that he discusses throughout the book, or to the Middle Ages. “The Renaissance,” writes Greene, “if it did nothing else that was new, chose to open a polemic against what it called the Dark Ages […] The ubiquitous imagery of disinterment, resurrection, and renascence needed a death and burial to justify itself” The Light in Troy, 3. See also Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

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interpreter. The transmission of knowledge, which was the humanist

vocation, is perceived as inevitably blocked (9-10).

For a humanist, “anachronism” is a failure in imitatio resulting from not having witnessed the time in which an original text originated. For him, interpretation and continued transmission of literature will always be blocked because he cannot fully read and grasp the past except via the filter of his own times.

Greene’s “anachronism” offers a viable reason for why an author must outdo his predecessor within epic imitatio. As David Quint has written, epic is the genre conventionally tied to empire.212 Yet epic is also tied to an empire’s roots and genealogy—that is, the past. The “anachronism” that must be overcome is not merely a Bloomian “anxiety of influence,” but rather a sense of inadequacy that is dually connected to both the seeming apotheosis of the early author and also the greatness of his earlier times as well. As such, the process of overgoing within epic imitatio involves a mastery of the earlier author in order to duplicate him (and his times), and additionally present a revamped model of what improved epic writing (and its corollary, empire) should look like. The process seeks to create a relationship that is simultaneously affectionate—a son seeking his father’s approval—and also Oedipally murderous, whereby the author desires to surpass his model for ultimate recognition.

Wherever overgoing occurs, past and present time synch to create a literary battleground.

Sidi Hamete/Cervantes satirically encapsulates the anxiety of overgoing in his own work in the figure of his hero, by emphasizing the manner in which Don Quijote

212 David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton.

224 is always out of time and place. He does not merely imitate his models and adapt them, but imports them as they were into his own times. In fact, the innkeeper and the priest debate whether the kind of chivalry imitated by Don Quijote ever existed at all.213 Don Quijote represents a kind of reversal similar to what Petrarch creates in his epic Africa in imitation of Virgil. In the Aeneid, Virgil connects the epic past with the

Augustan present when he describes the Forum in the Aeneid. Virgil’s narrator compares the mythic, overgrown, and wild past with the present magnificent and gilded Capitol. Petrarch, on the other hand, uses Virgil’s language (“silvestribus horrida dumis”) to compare what is now the golden past of Rome with present decay.

Greene believes that Petrarch requires the reader “to hold before his eyes two plans, two historical incarnations at once, and to shift his focus so quickly from the upper to the lower and back again that he grasps with a thrill the staggering impetus of time”

(91). Petrarch’s eighth book makes no explicit reference to his own age, but instead creates a reversed palimpsest where he superimposes present decay onto past glory. In a similar manner, Don Quijote notes the decay of morals, virtue, and honor, pointing to the mythical past, and attempts to imitate and revive it. However, given that Don

Quijote never reveals feelings of inadequacy or belatedness, he represents an ideal humanist interpreter. He truly believes that he can exhume the past of his romance books and recreate it in its full glory as a revival of not just fictional romance, but

213 Prior to the captive’s tale, the innkeeper agrees with the priest that Don Quijote is delusional—in opposition with the others—for his believing that he remains in the time of chivalry. However, the innkeeper insists that though the knight may seem ahistorical, such times did exist, “No seré yo tan loco que me haga caballero andante que bien veo que ahora no se usa lo que se usaba en aquel tiempo, cuando se dice que andaban por el mundo estos famosos caballeros” (DQ I, 398) ‘I’m not going to be so nuts that I’ll turn myself into a knight errant, because I can well see that things aren’t the way they used to be, back in those days, when they say that those famous knights marched through the world.’

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“history” from “those times” ‘aquel tiempo.’214 The characters, and indeed authors surrounding Don Quijote, on the other hand, are the ones who note the “anachronism” and infeasibility of his actions in seventeenth-century Spain.

Overgoing within epic imitatio signifies more than coveting Petrarchan

“gloria” for outdoing a previous author. (Although that’s certainly part of it, considering that Petrarch had himself crowned poet laureate in honor of his then- unfinished epic Africa.) As noted, in some early modern epics, the relationship between poets is depicted as personal, intimate, and fatherly—something oddly paralleled by their respective heroes. For instance, throughout both parts of Don

Quijote the itinerant knight reveals an acute awareness of his “chronicler” and the fact that his deeds are being recorded.215 Evoking Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Mehmed

II discussed in the previous chapter, Don Quijote speculates about how his personal narrator will recount the story of his noble deeds. Even before the uncanny events of

Part Two where the characters become aware of the existence of Part One, the knight reveals an understanding of the tradition of an epic author and his relationship to his hero. Each hero attempts to outdo the previous hero and, in turn, each author to write a more impressive account of that hero’s deeds. For the aged “knight,” merely winning a duel on horseback qualifies as overgoing a predecessor because he then attains not merely a new helmet or sword, but all the glory of the loser’s past victories (as in

Ariosto’s Orlando furioso).

Post-classical authors have depicted the patriarchal relationship of epic imitatio in varying ways, from Dante’s guide, Virgil, in the Divina commedia to Petrarch’s

214 Again, see the innkeeper’s reference to “aquel tiempo” in the above footnote. 215 See instances of this in DQ I, 80-81, 234 and DQ II, 58-59.

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Africa, where Ennius dreams of Homer (who then prophesizes about Petrarch himself).216 In the former work, Dante creates a loving friendship between the pilgrim and his guide that endows his work with authority, partially because of Virgil’s authorizing presence. However, Dante significantly leaves him behind when the pilgrim advances through purgatory to paradise, demonstrating not only that the pagan is denied celestial ascent, but also that Dante has surpassed him in skill. In Africa,

Petrarch’s overt, immodest inclusion of himself as the first poet to receive the laurel crown, thus trumping both Ennius and Homer (and the notably ignored Virgil) before him, is a clear construction of the literary genealogy to which he too is triumphant heir.

Yet Don Quijote is not an epic poem, but rather styled as something like an epic-romance novel written in prose. It does not begin in medias res. As the knight himself points out, it does not have a flawless hero. And unlike the Divina commedia or Africa, Cervantes is notably absent as a character within the work. As many scholars have observed, Cervantes embarks upon a prose epic, but leaves us with a cross between romance, history, and epic that results in a proto-novel.

By stepping away from the text, and introducing Sidi Hamete in his place,

Cervantes also dramatically changes the traditional creative process of epic. Going from pastoral to didactic and finally epic poetry, the rota Vergiliana or cursus Vergilii, was an author’s course and self-education in becoming a poet laureate. Cervantes too began his literary career this way.217 However, Sidi Hamete Benengeli did not. The

217 Frederick A. de Armas sees Cervantes’ literary career as a Virgilian one, but in prose, and as an attempt to “overgo” Virgil by both doubling the rota virgiliana, something infrequently

227 narrator informs us that Sidi Hamete is wise, esteemed, and omniscient, but reveals nothing indicating he followed a cursus Vergilii.

Despite this, Sidi Hamete Benengeli fills a similar role to Virgil’s in Dante’s

Divina commedia or Homer does in Petrarch’s Africa. Though not a spiritual guide to either Don Quijote or Cervantes, the introduction of Sidi Hamete permits Cervantes to avoid the inherent problems of “anachronism” within imitatio since the Arab

Manchegan historian is an epic writer whose past is also the present. Writing a history about contemporaneous events, Sidi Hamete’s words convert the present into a mythic past. And ironically, since the past that is evoked is also the present, it does not threaten to overwhelm the author. He is a present author whom the subsequent authors—the morisco translator, the Christian narrator, and Avellaneda—use first as an authorizing building block and then as the author to be overcome. On the other hand, Sidi Hamete is also an imitator, and his history is an imitation of previous works, namely epic and romance. In many ways, since his work is a “verdadera historia,” he is bound to follow his protagonist who crafts his actions into his own version of romance. The pursuit of truth allows Sidi Hamete to both elude and participate in a literary genealogy based upon imitatio.

However, there is some disagreement amongst the characters regarding the level of historical truth to which their author should adhere. When Sanson Carrasco describes public reaction to the first part of Don Quijote’s history, he mockingly notes studied in Spanish literature, and also ‘overgo’ earlier versions of epic. He reminds us that Don Quijote is really Cervantes’ proto-epic, paving the way for his true epic Persiles y Segismundo. Frederick A. de Armas, “Cervantes and the Virgilian Wheel: The Portrayal of a Literary Career,” in European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002) 268-285.

228 that some readers wished that Sidi Hamete had passed over some of Don Quijote’s brutal beatings. Sancho vehemently disagrees, insisting that the incidents where his knight is abused should be included because “this is where historical truth comes in”

‘ahí entra la verdad de la historia’ (DQ II, 61). Echoing St. John in Orlando furioso,

Don Quijote’s opinion is that such embarrassing elaboration is unnecessary and states,

“I dare say that Aeneas was not near as pious as Virgil painted him, nor was Ulysses as wise and cautious as Homer makes him” ‘A fee que no fue tan piadoso Eneas como

Virgilio le pinta, ni tan prudente Ulises como le describe Homero’(DQ II, 61). Thus,

Don Quijote advocates leniency from Sidi Hamete because, in his opinion, an epic author is obliged to describe his hero flatteringly despite flaws. As the hero of this story, Don Quijote expects Sidi Hamete to similarly gloss over his faults. The three men cannot agree where embellishment and outright fabrication begin and end. Later in the conversation, Sanson Carrasco remarks that in the “history” one won’t find either “an immodest word or an irreligious thought” ‘una palabra deshonesta ni un pensamiento menos que católico’ (DQ II, 64). Don Quijote agrees, adding that, to write it any differently would be lying, and that “historians who tell lies deserve to be burned, like people who counterfeit money” ‘los historiadores que de mentiras se valen habían de ser quemados, como los que hacen moneda falsa’(DQ II, 64). Thus, though Don Quijote advocates omission and exaggeration, pure lies are unacceptable in his history. This places Sidi Hamete Benengeli in an impossible position. On the one hand, lying appears to be a hallmark of imitatio and thus he is obliged to gloss over Don Quijote’s faults and exaggerate his virtues. That is, Sidi Hamete must lie. On

229 the other hand, lying reinforces the stereotype about false moors and even validates the knight’s fervent exhortation that such historians be burned like counterfeiters.

Another traditional purpose of the author within epic imitatio is revelatory and teleological, as a guide showing the way to salvation (as in the Divina commedia) and the future of the Roman Empire and Italy’s future poet (in the case of Africa).

However, readers never see a face-to-face meeting between Sidi Hamete and Don

Quijote like that between Virgil and Dante the pilgrim in the Commedia. Since Sidi

Hamete is clearly not his hero’s Christian spiritual guide, his revelatory purpose would more closely resemble Virgil’s when writing the Aeneid. That is, he should project

Don Quijote’s role in the grand scheme of the expanding Spanish Empire. Just as

Virgil’s epic was meant to glorify the Roman Empire of Caesar Augustus, Sidi’s task would be to laud Spain and its colonies. David Quint writes in Epic and Empire, “To the victors belongs epic, with its linear teleology; to the losers belongs romance, with its random or circular wandering”(9). Victors experience history as a coherent, end- directed story told by their own powers, whereas losers experience a contingency that they are powerless to shape to their own ends. This formulation supports the theory that Don Quijote is both romance and epic, pulled in different directions by its author and hero.

However, there is a problem with this teleological aspect of Sidi Hamete’s role as a poetic author in an imitatio-styled genealogy. As a result of his writing a verdadera historia, or a “truthful history,” instead of glorifying his hero and Spain,

Sidi Hamete Benengeli identifies the glaring disunity, disorganization, and poverty of

Spain as an “empire” mired in problems. He does not construct an epic that ties

230 together a fabled past with a present empire at its glorious zenith. With a bodiless voice, he writes about the contemporary and flawed Spain that he knows intimately.

Likewise, his aging hero from la Mancha has too many “stains” ‘manchas’ of his own and no progeny to be a literal ancestor (or progenitor) of any present royalty. It seems improbable that Sidi Hamete, a defeated moor whose people were conquered and eventually exiled from Spain, should be narrator and paladin for the Spanish Empire.

One way of understanding Sidi Hamete’s brutally honest representations of

Spain and its peoples is related to overgoing. In fact, his use of this technique is almost non-existent. The reason for this, of course, could be that he has several models (as does his hero) for his work instead of a single “father” to overcome. However, the absence of this technique suggests a marked change in the paternal literary genealogy for his lack of competition with (or outright ignoring of) his predecessors. Overgoing often occurs around epic similes and long descriptions of character or landscape.218

Instead, Sidi Hamete elects to present a literalized metaphor when he describes Don

Quijote’s seemingly irrational behavior. In a well-known episode, Don Quijote’s mauling of the sheep in Part One, Sidi Hamete overlays the knight’s metaphorical vision of a military battle (evoking romance or epic) upon the scene of the sheep’s slaughter that he and most other bystanders see. Sidi Hamete writes that Sancho and

Don Quijote placed “themselves on a slope from which they could easily have seen the two flocks which Don Quijote had turned into armies, if the clouds of dust being

218 For example the humanist Guarino takes a passage from Pliny, who describes the immense Tiber during the wet seasons and the boats that pass through it. Guarino copies much of this passage, but instead describes the Adige, emphasizing its superiority to the Tiber in its year- round plentifulness. For more, see Martin McLaughlin’s Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance, 121.

231 whipped up hadn’t obscured and indeed quite blocked their vision, in spite of which, seeing in his mind’s eye what no eye could see, Don Quijote began to explain”

(Raffel, 99-100) ‘pusiéronle sobre una loma, desde la cual se vieran bien las dos manadas que a don Quijote se le hicieron ejército, si las nubes del polvo que levantaban no les turbara y cegara la vista; pero, con todo esto, viendo en su imaginación lo que no veía ni había, con voz levantada comenzó a decir’ (DQ, 219).

From the little hill, Don Quijote continues with incredible (and for Sancho, unbelievable) descriptions of warriors from distant nations, the colors and mottos of their banners, and their coursers as well. In some ways the passage is mere parody, but not exactly. The presentation of two visions of reality, both of which are believed to be absolutely real and true is Sidi Hamete’s rupture of overgoing. Instead of aggrandizement and sublimation of his knight and episode(s) evoked from predecessor authors, he forgoes the hallmark technique completely. If anything, he acknowledges the tradition by mocking it, presenting the embarrassing possibility of the two realities co-existing. However, his explanation of the sheep “battle” nevertheless allows for both the original description (that of flocks of sheep) to persist without being outdone by Don Quijote’s attempt at overgoing. They are sheep and they are valiant warriors and they are neither one nor the other. For all of these reasons—the problem of truth, the stunted teleological purpose, the purposefully satirized romance, and failure of

“overgoing”—imitatio in its quintessential form is never the primary literary genealogy for the Quijote.

Isnad

232

Cervantes avoids the inherent problems of imitatio in his book by employing a starkly different literary genealogy for Sidi Hamete Benengeli with the introduction of a version of isnad. To recapitulate from chapter one, isnad is an Islamic literary chain of trustworthy authorities transmitting either khabar (virtually any kind of account) or hadith (stories related to Mohammad’s words and actions), which typically originated from either the Prophet himself or from someone close to him. The isnad functions as a figurative nametag attached to the beginning of hadith and khabar, both words related to verbs that express the idea of “informing,” “recounting,” or “reporting.”219

Both nouns demonstrate the strikingly anecdotal character of Arabic written narrative.

Whatever he may have called such literary transmission, Cervantes demonstrates secondary knowledge of isnad in chapter five when he compares tales from the knight’s chivalric romances to circulating hadiths. He writes,

Realizing, finally, that in fact he could not move, Don Quijote decided

to fall back on his usual solution, which was to think of some passage

from his books, and his madness brought to mind the tale of

Valdovinos and the Marqúes of Mantua, when Carloto left him

wounded up on the mountain—a story all little boys know, young men

haven’t forgotten, and old men still celebrate and even believe, though

for all that it’s no truer than the ones about Mohammad’s miracles.

(Raffel, Don Quijote, 31)

219 See chapter one and also Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 15-17, 97 and Dwight F. Reynolds et al. Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition, 37.

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Viendo, pues, que, en efeto, no podia menearse, acordó de acogerse a

su ordinario remedio, que era pensar en algún paso de sus libros, y

trújole su locura a la memoria aquel de Valdovinos y del marques de

Mantua, cuando Carloto le dejó herido en la montaña, historia sabida de

los niños, no ignorada de los mozos, celebrada y aun creída de los

viejos, y, con todo esto, no más verdadera que los milagros de

Mahoma. (DQ I, 102-3)

In his first adventure after being “knighted” by the innkeeper and prostitutes, Don

Quijote is laid out after a thorough thrashing by the merchants’ mule drivers. Acutely aware of his role as an imitator of heroes, he recalls the tale of Valdovinos not merely to provide succor to his woes, but because it seems an appropriately related passage to quote. Further, in citing this old ballad, the knight re-contextualizes his real experience—a failed attempt to attack the caravan—within the evoked one where he is the victim who has been forcibly separated from his beloved Dulcinea.220 Thus, Don

Quijote begins his peregrination by acting out an adventure of a fictional hero in what appears to be true imitatio.

However, when Sidi Hamete (or the narrator) describes Don Quijote’s evocation of the tale of Valdovinos, he compares it with “los milagros de Mahoma” for its being constantly recounted and shared amongst common people. Specifically, he asserts that “Mohammad’s miracles,” (what I take to be hadiths), resemble the tale

220 Israel Burshatin analyzes how this passage overlaps with Abencerraje concluding that, “the Cervantine parody of the Moorish genre alerts us to a fundamental presupposition which underpins the tradition: that romantic image of the Moor originates in a metaphorical process that seeks to describe him within the language and rhetorical system shaped by the conqueror and intended to project his presence and ascendancy,” “Power, Discourse, and Metaphor in the Abencerraje,” MLN 99 (1984): 212.

234 of Valdovinos in that both types of stories are untrue. By negative comparison, the passage sets up the interplay of the two primary literary genealogies that we see in both parts of Don Quijote. That is, the tale of Valdovinos arrives to us via imitatio, whereas a hadith (“milagro de Mahoma”) is transmitted via isnad. As the first author of Don Quijote, Sidi Hamete Benegeli is also the first transmitter of Don Quijote’s isnad. His task is to vouch for the truth of the tales he recounts of Don Quijote. In turn, his account is then transmitted verbally by the morisco translator and then again by the narrator to the reading public. With individual tales from Don Quijote, such as the Captive’s Tale, Sidi Hamete is merely the first to write down a tale with a much longer isnad.221

Until chapter eight, with the introduction of Sidi Hamete, Part One appears to roughly follow a paradigm of imitatio. However, after the narrator’s discovery of the original manuscript in the Toledo market, there is constant overlapping of the two literary genealogies. Don Quijote assumes that his chronicler is like Homer, Virgil, or

Ariosto—that is, a product of imitatio. However, as evidenced by the “original author’s” purposeful mutation of imitatio—his mockery of overgoing—this cannot be.

Rather, his Arab narrator records his deeds with the precision of an authorized transmitter of hadiths. And in fact, the historicity of Don Quijote’s deeds is more

“authentic” because they have been transmitted three times (and thus verified) before appearing in the Castilian translation, despite their contemporaneity. In this regard,

221 For example, when the captive has finished his tale and realizes that his brother, the judge, has entered the inn, he asks the priest to relate his tale to his brother so as not to overwhelm him. The chain of transmission from original act to final author is thus: captive (Ruy Pérez de Viedma), priest, Sidi Hamete Benengeli, the morisco translator, and finally the Christian narrator (DQ I, 514-520).

235 isnad resolves the problem of an absent past that is required in imitatio. The isnad in

Part One of Don Quijote effectively creates the past out of the present.

In second part, there is a shift in the balance of imitatio and isnad. The supremacy of either isnad or imitatio is still equivocal, but by virtue of Sidi Hamete’s increased appearances and interjections, the isnad-like genealogy appears more frequently. We are unceasingly reminded of the chain of transmission. The narrator refers to Sidi Hamete alone or in conjunction with the morisco translator in over fourteen chapters of the second book. His comments may appear in the form of simple head notes reminding the readers of the original author such as “What Benengeli says his readers can learn, if they read carefully” ‘De cosas que dice Benengeli que las sabrá quien le leyere, si las lee con atención’ (DQ II, 256). Sidi Hamete’s name also occurs in prefatory comments that trace the three authors’ succession in a manner strikingly close to how the isnad nametag accompanies hadiths.222 The Christian narrator’s constant reference to the other two authors, namely Sidi Hamete, exposes vestiges of isnad while simultaneously reminding the readers of the authorizing aspect of such a chain of transmission. A major reason for the increased presence of isnad in

Volume Two is certainly a result of the appearance of the apocryphal Quijote by

Avellaneda. Below I will return to discuss Avellaneda’s false Quijote as an

222 Regarding the Montesinos cave episode, the Christian narrator tells of a note in the margins, discovered by the morisco translator and handwritten by its first author, Sidi Hamete Benengeli: “Dice el que tradujo esta grande historia del original, de la que escribió su primer autor Cide Hamete Benengeli, que llegando al capítulo de la aventura de la cueva de Montesinos, en el margen dél estaban escritas de mano del mesmo Hamete estas mismas razones…” (DQ, II, 223). ‘He who translated this great history from its Arabic original, written by its primal author, Sidi Hamid Benengeli, tells us that, when he got to this chapter about the adventure in Montesinos’ Cave, he found, written in the margins, and in Sidi Hamid’s own handwriting, the following remarks…’ (Raffel, Don Quijote, 487).

236 unsuccessful instance of both imitatio and isnad. The explosion of references to the

Arab chronicler in Part Two serves to confirm the origins, truth, and primacy of this

Don Quijote over any other bastardized versions that may surface again.

Cervantes’ reference to hadiths (the “stories of Mohammad’s miracles”) and treatment of Don Quijote’s literary genealogy as an isnad expose the religious origins of such documentation. Hadiths are a type of supplement to the holy Qur’an. The reason that verification of sources is so important is they reveal the actions and sayings of the prophet that are not recorded in the Qur’an. While Sidi Hamete offers his blessing to Allah in chapter eight of Volume Two, there is never the slightest suggestion that the knight himself practices Islam or is associated with it in any way.

Rather, the formulaic manner in which Cervantes incorporates Sidi Hamete’s benedictions before his hero embarks on the next leg of his journey replaces the conventional epic evocation of the muses. The main purpose of isnad in Don Quijote, and its primary difference from epic imitatio lies in the function of preservation. In imitatio, a succeeding author’s success results from substantial alteration and improvement of the original text whereas an author within isnad is devoted to creating copies of the original that best preserve the truth of that account.

More so than imitatio, the existence of a variation of isnad within Don Quijote ironically brands the work as real and truthful. Whereas an epic author within imitatio is expected to embellish, even unto the point of lying, Sidi Hamete’s background as the first author in a literary genealogy styled as an isnad ironically lends him credence.

Returning to the initial discovery of Sidi Hamete’s notebook in the Toledo market, we can see how the narrator views Sidi Hamete’s complicated qualifications as a truthful

237 author. The narrator begins by stating that his only objection to the truthfulness of the work is that the author was Arab. He adds that,

On the other hand, since they’re so very hostile to us, the author is

more likely to have toned down rather than embellished his tale. Which

seems to me, indeed, to have been what happened, since when he could

and should have let his pen go, in praise of such a fine knight, he seems

to have quite deliberately passed over things in silence—a serious error

and an even worse plan, for an historian should be accurate, truthful,

and never driven by his feelings, so that neither self-interest nor fear,

neither ill will nor devotion, should lead him away from the highway of

truth, whose very mother is history, time’s great rival—storehouse of

men’s actions, witness of time past, example and bearer of tidings to

the present, and warning for the future. (Raffel, Don Quijote, 52-53)

Si a ésta se le puede poner alguna objeción cerca de su verdad, no

podrá ser otra sino haber sido su autor arábigo, siendo muy proprio de

los de aquella nación ser mentirosos; aunque, por ser tan nuestros

enemigos, antes se puede entender haber quedado falto en ella que

demasiado. Y ansí me parece a mí, pues cuando pudiera y debiera

estender la pluma en las alabanzas de tan buen caballero, parece que de

industria las pasa en silencio; cosa mal hecha y peor pensada, habiendo

y debiendo ser los historiadores puntuales, verdaderos y no nada

apasionados, y que ni el interés ni el miedo, el rancor ni la afición, no

les hagan torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia,

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émula del tiempo, depósito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado,

ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir. (DQ I, 144-

5)

Just as Don Quijote expresses misgivings in the second part, the Christian narrator has trouble parsing out whether Sidi Hamete is a trustworthy historian or not. For the narrator, Sidi Hamete is one of the soon-to-be expelled moriscos who is “hostile” to

Old Christians, the “us” (“our enemies” ‘nuestros enemigos’) of the passage. Though initially perturbed, the narrator reverses his stance and takes the author’s ethnic background as a token of truth, believing that if Sidi Hamete were not Arab he would likely have embellished the feats of Don Quijote in a biased way. The Christian narrator does not believe Sidi Hamete to be a stereotypically mendacious moor. He anticipates Don Quijote’s formulation of epic writers who embellish to the point of lying. Like Leo Africanus, Sidi Hamete’s Arabo-Islamic background is ironically the very thing that, according to the Christian narrator, permits readers to take him at his word. Put differently, the Christian narrator believes that Don Quijote is a truthful tale precisely because of the presumed hostility of its author towards Christians.

Ironically, the second-guessing and intertextual commenting that occurs between the three transmitters also demonstrates the presence of isnad in Don Quijote, particularly in Part Two. The thorough evaluation of Sidi Hamete by the Christian narrator above is similar to transmitters’ commentaries discussing the verisimilitude of a hadith. In Part Two, the morisco translator appears stating,

The author of our history, at this point, supplies an elaborate

description of Don Diego’s house, showing us what is likely to be

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found in a rich gentleman farmer’s house, but the author’s translator

decided to pass over these and other very similar trifles in silence, since

they don’t comport well with the main themes of this history, the

strength of which comes more from its truth than from such dull

digressions. (Raffel 450)

Aquí pinta el autor todas las circunstancias de la casa de don Diego,

pintándonos en ellas lo que contiene una casa de un caballero labrador

y rico; pero al traductor desta historia le pareció pasar estas y otras

semejantes menudencias en silencio, porque no venían bien con el

propósito principal de la historia; la cual más tiene su fuerza en la

verdad que en las frías digresiones. (DQ II, 169)

As with the Christian narrator, the morisco translator sifts out irrelevant or even untruthful passages for the reader. Though his commentary initially may appear to undermine Sidi Hamete, it actually strengthens the literary genealogy as a whole in the way each author checks the other in service of the text. The authorial voices of Don

Quijote may have different motives or inclinations in telling the story, but all desire to preserve “the truth.” Again, one does not deal with the overgoing of predecessors in epic imitatio, but rather an emphasis on preservation of the original account.

The great paradox of the Christian narrator’s comments is that—aside from the cautionary note that Sidi Hamete may be trustworthy because he is an Arab “hostile” to Christians—there is absolutely no mention of the religious situation in Spain. It is doubtful that Sidi Hamete’s “warning for the future” ‘aviso de lo presente’ refers to the Alpujarras Rebellion of 1568-71 or the morisco expulsions beginning in 1609 (DQ

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I, 145). What message does Cervantes convey to his readers by insisting that his truthful history is written by an Arab Manchegan historian who chronicles a knight stuck in fictional times of romance? The only purpose that Sidi Hamete ever expresses to his readers is that of smashing all tales of chivalry by writing Don Quijote. Perhaps because, as the likely expelled Sidi Hamete would see it, altruistic chivalry in Spain— if it ever existed—is extinct.

We then view the story of Valdovinos and miracles of Mohammad retrospectively as Cervantes’ tongue-in-cheek mockery of the imitatio tradition and the beginning of his acknowledgement that Arabo-Islamic influence is not as easily eradicable as the Spanish monarchy imagined. After he has his Christian narrator opine in chapter five that such tales as that of Valdovinos (imitatio) are no truer than those of the Prophet’s miracles (isnad), he immediately throws everything into question by introducing Sidi Hamete as the original author, in an isnad-like literary genealogy in chapter eight. As I will show below, the underlying mistrust and double- checking that occurs in Part One as a result of Cervantes’ choice of “original author” extends to question the truth of everything in his book, but particularly the morisco situation. From the characters themselves to sangre limpia, Cervantes uses the case of the Arab Manchegan historian to underscore the false pretenses of the Catholic illusions of originality and pure blood in the beginning of seventeenth century Spain.

Unauthorized transmission

When the person using the pseudonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda issued his 1614 Segundo tomo del ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha que

241 contiene su tercera salida, he declared that the genesis of his “sequel” to Cervantes’

Volume One was rather similar to that of the original. In the first chapter, his narrator claims the story of Don Quijote’s third sally into the world was recovered by “the sage

Alisolán,” ‘el sabio Alisolán’ a descendent of the recently expelled moors of Aragón

(DQA, 57).223 The narrator tells us that, like the original, this “historical record” ‘annal de historia’ was composed in Arabic (DQA, 57). We do not know who the first transmitter of this story was, and are left to assume that the narrator translated the version found by Alisolán (or perhaps a version that Alisolán rewrote), since he merely continues in Castilian, “he speaks as follows” ‘y dice desta manera’ to begin the story of his Don Quijote and Sancho (DQA, 57). There is virtually no other reference to Alisolán (or his Arabic, or aljamiado) until the very end of the book.224

There is much speculation and disagreement regarding Avellaneda’s identity.225 Other than biblical allusions in the prologue that suggest his piety, we know virtually nothing about him. 226 As a result of the dialect and syntax he uses, he appears to have been Aragonese. One clue that scholars pursue is Avellaneda’s attack

223 Quotations from Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda’s Segundo tomo del ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha que contiene su tercera salida will be cited as DQA within the body of the chapter, (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1971). 224 In chapter 25, the narrator reminds us that he is translating the story that he recounts to us. 225 See Alfonso Martín de Jiménez, "Cervantes sabía que Pasamonte era Avellaneda: la Vida de Pasamonte, el Quijote apócrifo y El coloquio de los perros," Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, 25 (2005 [2006]): 105-157 who has reanimated Martín de Riquer’s theories of Avellaneda’s identity, Cervantes, Passamonte y Avellaneda (Barcelona: Sirmio, 1988). 226 Avellaneda condemns sin and appears to be deeply influenced by the Counter Reformation movement. In addition, he includes a famous miracle of the Virgin, which Server and Keller find to be one of the most moving versions of the story, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, Don Quijote de la Mancha (Part II): Being the spurious continuation of Miguel de Cervantes Part I, Ed & Trans Alberta Wilson Server and John Esten Keller, (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1980) viii.

242 upon and seemingly bitter rivalry with Cervantes.227 In the prologue to the false sequel, Avellaneda does not deflect authorship as Cervantes (who calls himself a mere

“stepfather” ‘padrastro’ to the work) does in his Don Quijote. Avellaneda assumes full credit for the work, writing in the first person of “my work” ‘mi trabajo’ (DQA, 53).

Avellaneda then figuratively announces that his work will participate in imitatio, listing various versions of Arcadia, the Diana, and the love affairs of Angélica as instances of legitimate imitation over the past century. However, in his attempt to persuade his readers that “there is nothing new about different authors pursuing the same story” ‘no es nuevo el proseguir una historia diferentes sujetos,’ he glosses over the fact that most of these examples have a first author who conceived of the work and was then imitated (postmortem) by subsequent authors (DQA, 53). The story that

Avellaneda “pursues” is therefore not a fable, available to all as passing folklore, but original material published a mere nine years earlier by its creator. His premise is the same as Cervantes’; he innocently came across a historical manuscript in a foreign language and went about publishing it. In imitating the purported history of the original Don Quijote—that Sidi Hamete’s manuscript was found in a Toledo bookseller’s stall—Avellaneda both imitates Cervantes and cleverly dismisses detractors’ criticisms that he might be copying another’s work dishonestly. Instead,

Avellaneda preemptively avoids such discussion by pontificating about envy, suggesting, of course, that this is the sentiment of which Cervantes will be guilty.

227 Avellaneda says that his prologue is “less boastful and offensive to its readers than the one Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra placed before his first part, and more humble than the one he wrote for his Novelas, satirical rather than exemplary, although quite ingenious” Server and Keller, 3 ‘menos carcareado y agresor de sus letores que el que a su primera parte puso Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, y más humilde que el que segundó en sus novellas, más satíricas que ejemplares, si bien no poco ingeniosas’ (DQA, 51).

243

Avellaneda concludes, “this part somewhat varies from his first part; because my disposition entirely differs from his, and in matters of opinion about anything historical, and as authentic as this is, each can go in the direction he pleases” ‘En algo diferencia esta parte de la primera suya; porque tengo opuesto humor también al suyo; y en material de opiniones en cosas de historia, y tan auténtica como ésta, cada cual puede echar por donde le pareciere’ (DQA, 54). In these concluding remarks,

Avellaneda seems to get Cervantes at his own game. That is, Avellaneda seems to be arguing that, if one takes Cervantes’ literary genealogies and the invention of a historical Sidi Hamete Benengeli seriously, then the story of Don Quijote and Sancho may be exploited by whoever finds it (not unlike Mármol’s usurpation of Africanus’ work). In “cosas de historia”—and Avellaneda sarcastically notes, especially ones as

“auténticas” (“true” or “original”) as this story—anyone is free to retell the story.

In these arguments Avellaneda seems to grasp the competitive nature of imitatio—at least within early modern epic and romance. In fact, he achieves a more quintessential imitatio of Don Quijote than Cervantes’ original does of the various works it claims to imitate (and dismantle), particularly with regard to overgoing. He selects the most basic representation of Sancho and Don Quijote and exaggerates motifs from Cervantes’ Part One. Their names and a mere sketch of their appearances are all that remain of the original characters when Avellaneda is through telling his version of the story. Avellaneda’s primary success occurs in his overgoing of

Cervantes’ declared purpose of shattering chivalric romances. Whereas it is equivocal

(at best) whether Cervantes accomplishes this goal, Avellaneda creates a romance that shows the debacle of a night and his squire in parody. Avellaneda’s failure in gaining

244 a place in Cervantes’ literary genealogy occurs because he does not grasp the purpose of Sidi Hamete Benengeli and his mixed literary systems.

With regard to imitatio, it is useful to focus upon Avellaneda’s rant upon the sin of “envy” ‘envidia’ (DQA, 53). As discussed above, overgoing within epic imitatio is nearly always born of (an often declared) envy and admiration. However,

Avellaneda is in the unique position of accusing the immediate predecessor in his literary genealogy of envying him, the successor (or “son”). Because the two authors coexist in time, Avellaneda can challenge his predecessor with his version of the story and witness the consequences almost immediately—something none of the epic or romance authors previously mentioned had the opportunity to do. (Petrarch is notable, however, for having staged just such a rupture in his literary genealogy in Africa with

Homer and Ennius.)

In some instances, overgoing for Avellaneda is mere parody. He exaggerates characters and episodes taken from Cervantes to a preposterous level. However, this technique does not succeed in his stated purpose of teaching one “not to be crazy” ‘a no ser loco,’ (DQA 54) so much as make his story a contrived version of Don Quijote with narrow and flat characters. Avellaneda fixates on anecdotes and instances in

Cervantes with hyperbolic exaggeration for what even Cervantes would have done.

For example, while Sancho confers on Don Quijote the name “The Knight of the Sad

Face” (Caballero de la triste figura) in Cervantes’ book, Avellaneda arbitrarily has

Don Quijote uncharacteristically rename himself “The Knight Who’s Fallen Out of

Love” (El caballero desamorado) because of a vitriolic letter from Dulcinea (DQA,

94). Though Cervantes’ Don Quijote acts out episodes from romances he has read

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(such as the tale of Valdovinos), he never loses a sense of who he is, a “chivalric knight.” On the contrary, Avellaneda’s Don Quijote calls himself Bernardo del Carpio

(DQA, 136) one moment and Achilles the next (DQA, 139). Cervantes’ knight imitates exempla, but maintains his uniqueness, while Avellaneda’s knight entirely subsumes and becomes new personae.

Creating formulaic, closed interpretations explaining Don Quijote’s insanity as merely that, Avellaneda fixes all understanding of the knight as not merely crazy, but monotonous and imbecilic. For example, “Don Quijote ate only a very little, for most of the supper was overlooked as he made speeches and grimaces. However, Sancho saved his master from embarrassment, because with a couple of hoistings of his arm he ate up all that was left,…” (Server and Keller, 43) ‘cenó harto poco don Quijote, pues lo más de la cena se le fue en hacer discursos y visajes. Pero Sancho sacó de vergüenza a su amo, pues a dos carrillos se comió todo lo que quedaba’ (DQA, 102).

There is no Cervantine wisdom in Don Quijote. The brio and subtle brilliance of Don

Quijote’s pre- and postprandial lectures vanish into mere “discursos y visajes” in

Avellaneda. On the one hand, Avellaneda outdoes Cervantes’ mockery of romance.

However, in his attempt to overgo Cervantes, Avellaneda’s unrecognizable imitatio strays so far from the original as to fail entirely.

Later in the journey, Avellaneda’s Sancho recounts his master’s follies from

Cervantes’ Part One to the travel group:

In this manner Sancho disclosed all that he knew about Don Quijote

and they all laughed a great deal over the affair of the galley slaves, the

penitence in the Sierra Morena, and his being locked up in a cage. From

246

all this they began to understand Don Quixote’s condition and the

simplicity with which Sancho followed him, praising his acts. (Server

and Keller 64)

Y a este compás desbuchó Sancho todo lo que de don Quijote sabía.

Pero rieron mucho con lo de los galeotes y penitencia de Sierra Morena

y encerramiento de la jaula, con lo cual acabaron de entender lo que

don Quijote era, y la simplicidad con que Sancho le seguía, alabando

sus cosas,” (DQA 129).

In this passage, Avellaneda cites several episodes from Cervantes’ Don Quijote as instances of Don Quijote’s insanity. Notably, in each moment (from Cervantes) the knight engages in an act of imitatio of his own—liberating the galley slaves, his

Orlando-like penitence in the Sierra Morena mountains, and his “imprisonment” in the cage at the closing of Part One—all imitations of his romances. Avellaneda declares

Don Quijote crazy and his squire a simpleton by summarily evoking these passages from Cervantes and then casting them away, completely missing the subtlety of

Cervante’s allusions. According to Avellaneda, Sancho’s audience immediately comprehended (“acabaron de entender”) the two characters by merely hearing

Sancho’s brief explanation. If anything, Avellaneda discloses not the idiocy of Sancho and Don Quijote, but rather the simple close-mindedness of their bourgeois traveling companions who, after hearing of the original, are much too hasty to judge and reduce.

Like Avellaneda, they are incapable of gathering a broader understanding of those episodes.

247

Avellaneda’s largest effort to outdo Cervantes occurs in the conclusion of his

Don Quijote. He exaggerates the ending of the original Part One, where Don Quijote is returned to his hometown locked in a cage by the priest and barber, among others.

Instead, he has Don Álvaro hatch a plan to forcibly bring Don Quijote to the Toledo

Casa del Nuncio insane asylum, bringing the knight’s imprisonment to an entirely different, darker level. Instead of the witty way in which Cervantes draws other characters into Don Quijote’s world, thus revealing various other things about Spanish society and the individual psyche as well, Don Quijote’s traveling companions cruelly trick a bumbling knight into forced asylum. As Cervantes will note in Part Two about the malicious tricks that the duke and duchess play on Sancho and Don Quijote, such participation in Don Quijote’s insanity—for whatever reason—says worse things about those tricking than those who are duped. Avellaneda, however, never addresses the cruelty of Don Álvaro, the Archipámpano, or Prince Perianeo who quarantine Don

Quijote and remove him from Barbara. In addition, they force Sancho to relocate his wife and remain at court for their pleasure and mockery as farmer-jesters. For

Avellaneda, it is clear that such manipulation of peasants and the mentally ill—what he reduces Don Quijote to—is not only legitimate, but condoned for those with power and money.

Avellaneda’s understanding of the original Don Quijote is as a romance that may be imitated and, in his opinion, improved upon within a genealogy of imitatio.

His aim is to overgo Cervantes in a way that not merely matches up to his predecessor, but bests him with flourishes such as the forced detainment at the insane asylum. His conclusion summarily determines that the knight is insane and bereft of the brilliance

248 with which Cervantes colors his Don Quijote. In this way he succeeds in an imitation, but not imitatio of Cervantes.

Avellaneda’s reading of Sidi Hamete Benengeli’s function too, unwittingly occurs within a system of imitatio. That is, he assumes that he may reproduce the concept of a recovered foreign (Arabic) document by merely switching the name of

Sidi Hamete for Alisolán. The concept of an isnad-like chain of transmission vanishes.

Had Avellaneda understood this, perhaps he would have substituted the name Alquife for the morisco translator and not another “first author” to chronicle Don Quijote’s adventures, thus adding himself to the preexisting genealogy. As noted above,

Avellaneda instead uses the concept of an Arab author only for immunity in presenting

“Part Two” of Don Quijote since these documents were reportedly available to all.

The balance of imitatio and isnad within Cervantes’ Part One disappears in

Avellaneda and thus, also the notion of preservation of a verdadera historia meant to sustain the passing of time.

To illustrate Avellaneda’s lack of comprehension of the isnad genealogy in

Cervantes, there is a series of bizarre references to yet another historian, “Alquife.”

Avellaneda’s Don Quijote states, “It has been many days since I saw the sage Alquife who is in charge of writing up my exploits. I believe he is intentionally leaving me alone for some toils so that I may learn from them to eat hard bread and stand on my own two feet, as they say” ‘muchos días ha que el sabio Alquife, a cuya cuenta está el escribir mis fazañas, no lo he visto, y creo que de industria hace el dejarme solo en algunos trabajos, para que así aprenda dellos a comer el pan con corteza, y me valga por mi pico, como dicen’ (DQA, 129-130). Why Alquife? He is the main historian in

249

Amadís de Grecia. What about Alisolán? In fact, mention of Alquife occurs more frequently than that of the initially named “author” Alisolán.228 Why does Avellaneda use the names of all of the original characters, but not Sidi Hamete? One explanation may be that Avellaneda seeks to undercut Cervantes by indicating that he had versions of the knight’s story that were related by a different historian, thus eliminating

Cervantes’ (and Sidi Hamete’s) genealogy and substituting his own. However, such comportment is another indicator of imitatio and a version of overgoing.

Unlike Cervantes’ Part One, where Don Quijote believes that there is an unnamed chronicler who will set down his deeds on paper, Avellaneda’s knight names his historian, suggesting that he is also some sort of interventional magician who, at the moment, is leaving him to learn lessons on his own. The commentary that we saw from the Christian narrator regarding the truth of Sidi Hamete disappears. Apart from an Arabic-sounding name, there is no discussion of Alisolán’s (or Alquife’s) Arabo-

Islamic heritage. In fact, throughout the book, Avellaneda omits any reference to the plight of moriscos. The only real reference to Islam—that of the attempt to circumcise and convert Sancho—is incredibly botched and inaccurate (DQA 350-352). Sidi

Hamete represents a token exoticism removed from the cultural and historical situation of the moriscos at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Spain.

“Si tú no me descubres Sancho”: Spain’s Ineradicable Arab-Islamic Heritage

In the second part of Don Quijote, Cervantes reestablishes Sidi Hamete’s authority in several ways. First, Cervantes alters the plot of the story. At the closing of

228 Compare references to Alisolán in Chapters 1 and 25 to Alquife in Chapters 7, 24, 26, 28, 31, and 34.

250

Part One, the hidalgo and his squire announced their intentions to go to Zaragoza.

However, in chapter sixty—likely around the time Cervantes discovered Avellaneda’s false Quijote—he sends his protagonists instead to Barcelona. At an inn where Sancho and Don Quijote pause for the night, they overhear two men discussing Avellaneda’s apocryphal “Part Two,” comparing it with Cervantes’ Part One. Indeed, one of the men laments the travesty of Don Quijote being no longer in love with Dulcinea in the false Quijote. (Recall Avellaneda arbitrarily changed Don Quijote’s title to El caballero desamorado, “The Knight Who’s Fallen Out of Love”.) When an ireful Don

Quijote surfaces to dispute his being out of love with Dulcinea, the men fall into discussion about Avellaneda’s book.

The two companions address, point by point, various inaccuracies from

Avellaneda’s sequel (Sancho’s wife’s name and inordinate gluttony, for instance).

However, what is novel about Cervantes’ (or Sidi Hamete’s) approach to censuring

Avellaneda is that, unlike Avellaneda, he does not merely censure him in his prologue, but does so through his characters. Sancho clarifies that “the Sancho and the Don

Quijote in that book have got to be different people from the ones in Sidi Hamete

Benengeli’s book, because the ones in his book are us: my master is brave, and wise, and madly in love, and I’m just a plain fellow with a good sense of humor, and no glutton, and no drunkard” (E 675) ‘El Sancho y el don Quijote desa historia deben de ser otros que los que andan en aquella que compuso Cide Hamete Benengeli, que somos nosotros: mi amo, valiente, discreto y enamorado; y yo, simple gracioso, y no comedor ni borracho’ (DQII, 489). That is, Sancho curbs Avellaneda’s improper and inaccurate overgoing by clarifying and correcting their characteristics. In addition,

251 when Don Quijote tells of his intentions to go to Zaragoza only to discover that the

“Aragonese author” had his characters do the same, Don Quijote—not Cervantes or

Sidi Hamete—changes his plans. “In that case” he states, “I will not set foot in

Zaragoza, and thus expose for all the world to see the lies of this modern historian, and also let everyone see that I am not the Don Quijote he’s talking about” ‘Por el mismo caso, no pondré los pies en Zaragoza, y así sacaré a la plaza del mundo la mentira dese historiador moderno, y echarán de ver las gentes como yo no soy el don Quijote que él dice’ (DQII, 490). He places the reins—or pen—firmly back into Sidi Hamete’s hands with seemingly real characters who act and react to current events. If Cervantes’ book ever even lost authority, he reaffirms it again within an isnad styled literary framework. Not only the morisco translator and the Christian narrator, but now the protagonists determine the verisimilitude of the “original story.” Their disavowal of

Avellaneda and of their having participated in the stories that he narrates cleverly squelches a bastard “lineage” in the literary genealogy of Don Quijote.

Cervantes further confirms the supremacy of his Sancho and Don Quijote when he in turn borrows a character from Avellaneda’s false Quijote, Don Álvaro

Tarfe. This maneuver accomplishes at least two things. First, just as Avellaneda attempts to become a successor to Cervantes by means of imitatio, Cervantes in turn adapts a newly invented storyline and character from Avellaneda—yet another instance of overgoing. However, Cervantes does not stop there. After assuring Don

Álvaro that they are the authentic Sancho and Don Quijote, the gentlemen vouches before a notary and magistrate that “I can’t have seen what I saw, nor can I have experienced what I experienced” ‘No he visto lo que he visto ni ha pasado por mí lo

252 que ha pasado’ (DQII, 578). Looking closely at Don Álvaro’s statement in Cervantes, we see that Cervantes’s use of isnad is the other way in which he hits back at

Avellaneda. As with verification of a hadith, the first transmitter vouches for what he saw or heard personally. Here Cervantes has Avellaneda’s own creation contradict the story in which he partook. Using the language of a witness when referring to his own life within Avellaneda’s book, Don Álvaro contradicts his transmitter’s words—he neither saw what he seemed to have seen, nor did what appeared to have transpired actually happen. In fact, Don Álvaro’s statement serves not only to end a wayward genealogy, but also vouches for Sidi Hamete’s version of the story as if adding his name as an inspector of the true book. Thus, Cervantes improves upon his books’ isnad with Avellaneda’s character to verify the truth of his own story, something beyond Avellaneda’s demonstrated comprehension of Volume One.

The most apparent way that Cervantes overturns Avellaneda’s efforts is in the explosion of references to Sidi Hamete in Part Two. As mentioned above, his increased presence serves mainly to strengthen the isnad of the book (particularly in the way that the various authors comment upon one another) and maintain its novelty apart from Avellaneda. However, the insistence upon Sidi Hamete as a real person has the dual purpose of not only eliminating the “glitch” in the genealogy, but underscoring Spain’s mixed heritage, particularly the ineradicable Arab influences.

Whereas in Part One Cervantes had little to say about the political issue of moriscos in Spain (aside from Sidi Hamete), he offers a compassionate depiction of one of the recently expelled moriscos from Sancho’s hometown. After Sancho resign from his position as governor, he returns home to find his master and bumps into

253

German pilgrims begging for alms. When one of them calls out to Sancho in “very good Spanish” ‘en voz…muy castellana,’ Sancho recognizes his old neighbor and shopkeeper, “Ricote el morisco” as he refers to himself (DQII, 446-7). Having removed his German disguise, Ricote explains to Sancho that he has returned incognito in order to retrieve buried treasure that he was forced to hide illegally once the statutes expelling the moriscos had been announced. In addition, he seeks information about his wife and daughter whom he hopes to recover and bring with him back to Germany, his new home. After a sumptuous lunch, the two former neighbors have a lengthy discussion directly addressing the expulsions that began in 1609 and how they affected both moriscos generally and Ricote’s family in particular. Although

Cervantes does not mince words when it comes to the expulsion itself, he weaves in the tragic details of an exile who considered himself a Spaniard.229

Cervantes, or Sidi Hamete, has Ricote give Sancho an account of the events leading to his forced translocation. In the “purest Spanish” ‘ la pura castellana’ he tells of the harsh, terrifying punishment ordered by “His Majesty” ‘su Majestad’ (DQII,

450). However, he cautiously adds that the expulsion was also righteous and holy;

It seemed to me that nothing less than divine inspiration could have led

His Majesty to promulgate such a courageous decree—not that all of us

were equally guilty, some [moriscos] having become firm and reliable

Christians, but most were. […] Truly, the penalty of perpetual exile fell

upon us for good cause, and though some may think it a mild and

229 Whether Cervantes was pro- or anti-morisco has been hotly debated amongst scholars. Most seem to see the Quijote as favorable and the Persiles as antagonistic towards moriscos. For a thorough survey of criticism on this issue see note four in Francisco Márquez Villanueva, Personajes y Temas del Quijote (Madrid: Taurus, 1975) 232-233.

254 gentle punishment, to us it was the most terrible we could have received. Wherever we are, we weep for the Spanish homeland where, after all, we were born and raised, nor have we found, anywhere else, the welcome our miserable hearts long for. […] We had not known our good fortune until we lost it, and virtually every one of us has such a burning desire to return to Spain that those among us who know the language as I do—and there are many, many who do—in fact make our way back, abandoning our wives and children in all those places, for that is how intensely we love Spain, and now, indeed, I know and have experienced the common saying: The love of your country is sweet.

Me parece que fue inspiración divina la que movió a su Majestad a poner en efecto tan gallarda resolución, no porque todos fuésemos culpados, que algunos había cristianos firmes y verdaderos; pero eran tan pocos […] con justa razón fuimos castigados con la pena del destierro, blanda y suave al parecer de algunos, pero al nuestro, la más terrible que se nos podía dar. Doquiera que estamos lloramos por

España; que, en fin nacimos en ella y es nuestra patria natural; en ninguna parte hallamos el acogimiento que nuestra desventura desea,

[…]No hemos conocido el bien hasta que le hemos perdido; y es el deseo tan grande que casi todos tenemos de volver a España, que los más de aquellos, y son muchos, que saben la lengua como yo, se vuelven a ella, y dejan allá sus mujeres y sus hijos desamparados: tanto

255

es el amor que la tienen; y agora conozco y experimento lo que suele

decirse: es dulce el amor de la patria. (DQII, 450-1)

Ricote’s tragic and passionate statement is rife with qualifications about the Spanish monarch’s decision—that his punishment was deserved and just and that some of the exiled were not good Christians. However, interspersed between these justifications one reads a defense for someone who is “Spanish,” who speaks “pure Castilian,” and who desperately longs to return to his patria. The emphasis on “the morisco” Ricote’s perfect Spanish language and assimilation is striking for its resonance with the 1567 pragmáticas issued prior to the Alpujarras rebellion, perhaps one of the incidents which Ricote agreed merited the expulsion several decades later. Amongst the many ordinances passed were mandates for all moriscos to speak and read Spanish and to cease wearing their traditional clothing. Ricote looks and speaks like any other

Spaniard remaining in Spain and yet he and his family were nevertheless kicked out.

Indeed he tells Sancho that though his wife and daughter are better Catholics than him, that “I’m more Christian than Moor” ‘tengo más de cristiano que de moro’ as though those two things were opposed (452). Cervantes seems to be cautiously asking not only who is of Muslim or Old Christian descent, but rather, “Who is Spanish, anyway?” suggesting a very modern definition of nationality dependent upon patria, not race or religion. Indeed, what is meant by “España” in the seventeenth-century; is it a national term or a geographical one (formerly “Hispania” and referring to the entire Iberian Peninsula). A mix of both of those meanings? None of this is clear in

Ricote’s speech to Sancho.

256

The most telling part of Ricote and Sancho’s exchange occurs after Sancho warns Ricote of severe punishment if he is caught. Ricote replies with a textured comment that, if Sancho did not recognize him, no one will: “Si tú no me descubres,

Sancho…no habré nadie que me conozca” (DQ II, 448). This phrase could be translated as “if you don’t recognize me, Sancho.” However, the verb “descubrir” also means to “discover” or “uncover” and thus the phrase could also be read as, “No one will recognize me, if you don’t turn me in, Sancho.” In fact, despite Ricote’s familiarity with Sancho—calling him “friend” ‘amigo’ several times—Sancho remains guarded. Using the same verb, “descubrir,” Sancho even threatens Ricote when encouraged to help him uncover his buried treasure stating, “be satisfied that I won’t turn you in” ‘conténtate que por mí no serás descubierto’ (DQ II, 453). Just who is, or was morisco and who is “Spanish” is not visibly apparent in this case. Sidi Hamete makes it clear that Ricote speaks, behaves, and believes just like an Old Christian

Spaniard.

It is one thing for Cervantes to narrate Ricote’s story and quite another for Sidi

Hamete to relay the account. After the back and forth commentary about the credibility of moors, what does it mean for Sidi Hamete to include a sympathetic portrayal of an unfairly expelled morisco’s homecoming? For one, Sidi Hamete has prepared his readers to believe Ricote’s vows of Spanish patriotism with such preemptive comments as “he records that he would have liked to pass over them in silence, fearful that no one would believe him” ‘dice que quisiera pasarle en silencio, temeroso de que no había de ser creído’ (DQ II, 103). Again, the fact that Sidi Hamete does not withhold seemingly outrageous information from his readers is what

257 encourages them to believe, if not sympathize, with Ricote. Whether or not he agrees with Ricote’s assertion that, although a travesty for his family, the expulsion was just and divinely inspired, Sidi Hamete reports it nonetheless. If Sidi Hamete managed to chronicle the second part of Sancho and Don Quijote’s adventures in Spain, then he too returned to Spain illegally, if he had ever left in the first place.

Although Sidi Hamete never directly comments upon Ricote and Sancho’s reunion, he offers some allusive words at the beginning of the previous chapter on the fickleness of life. He writes of the cyclical nature of the seasons, which demonstrate time’s perpetual turning,

But our human life runs giddily out, long before time does, and there is

no hope for renewal except in the next world, which is eternal and

without any end. Or so says Sidi Hamete, Muhammadan philosopher,

for there are many who, without the light of true faith to show it to

them, nevertheless fully comprehend the fickleness and instability of

this mortal life, and the endless reach of eternity toward which it

looks—though what our author is talking about here, when he refers to

the speed with which things come to an end, and are consumed, and lie

totally undone, is how Sancho’s governorship vanished into shadows

and smoke.

Sola la vida humana corre a su fin ligera más que el tiempo, sin esperar

renovarse si no es en la otra, que no tiene términos que la limiten. Esto

dice Cide Hamete, filósofo mahomético; porque esto de entender la

ligereza e instabilidad de la vida presente, y de la duración de la eternal

258

que se espera, muchos sin lumbre de fe, sino con la luz natural, lo han

entendido; pero aquí nuestro autor lo dice por la presteza con que se

acabó, se consumió, se deshizo, se fue como en sombra y humo el

gobierno de Sancho. (DQII 440)

In this equally pathos-filled statement, several people speak. First, Sidi Hamete makes his existential statement on the brevity of mortal life. Either the morisco translator or the Christian narrator then interpret his words, reminding us that Sidi Hamete is a

Muslim and therefore lacks the “light of [Christian] faith” ‘lumbre de fe.’ However, the second author emphasizes that Sidi Hamete nevertheless fully comprehends the afterlife and in particular, “the fickleness and instability of the present life” ‘la ligereza e instabilidad de la vida presente’ and “how quickly things come to an end, are consumed, and undone” ‘la presteza con que se acabó, se consumió, se deshizo.’ This could very well be Sidi Hamete’s requiem to morisco permanence in the Iberian peninsula—fickle and undone suddenly. In fact, the combination of Sidi Hamete’s statement and the second author’s interpretation is so drawn out and suggestive, that the second author must pause to inform us that what Sidi Hamete is referring to is the end of Sancho’s governorship and not, in fact, the 1609-1614 expulsion of the moriscos.

Cervantes never makes a definitive statement on the fairness of the expulsion, or the larger situation of Spaniards of Muslim descent in the peninsula, but he does something which Avellaneda the Aragonese failed to do completely.230 He

230 Aragon being one of the centers for relocation of moriscos, it is odd that Avellaneda says near to nothing about them. Apart from Sancho’s incredibly inaccurate and ideologically fraught “conversion ceremony,” he omits any mention of Islam or of converted Muslims.

259 acknowledges the ineradicabilty of Arabo-Islamic influence in the peninsula.

Cervantes’ reconstruction of genealogies in Don Quijote not only serves to radically change notions of authorship, but also to minimally undermine the Spanish court’s hateful and oppressive policy towards moriscos, questioning if pure blood genealogies even exist.

In the end, the final word belongs to Sidi Hamete. He hangs his pen on a copper wire, advising it to warn anyone who might use it again: “Don Quijote was born only for me, and I for him: he knew how to act and I, how to write; only we two are one” ‘Para mí sola nació don Quijote, y yo para él: él supo obrar y yo escribir; solos los dos somos para en uno’ (DQII, 592). Luce López Baralt writes of the

Qur’anic references related to Sidi Hamete’s pen, but the Islamic roots are already present in Part One and permeate Part Two by means of the book’s partial isnad literary genealogy.231 In writing Don Quijote’s death, Cervantes definitively closes the future possibility of the “fake Tordesillan writer” ‘escritor fingido y tordesillesco’ ever attempting to reproduce his story again(DQII, 592). He describes the physical deterioration of his knight’s corpse and the pulverization of his bones that may never be woven into another story by means of imitatio—in an attempt to best El ingenioso don Quijote de la Mancha. Nor, as his warning to his pen indicates, may it even be copied in order to faithfully preserve its original words. Although Cervantes knows that someone will inevitably attempt to use his pen again, he effectively closes all

Carroll B. Johnson animates a discussion on Don Álvaro Tarfe’s morisco heritage and the ignored implications of this within Avellaneda, “Phantom Pre-texts and Fictional Authors,” 194-195. 231 Luce López Baralt, “The Supreme Pen (Al-Qalam al-A’la).”

260 possibility of Sidi Hamete Benengeli’s literary genealogy being continued by a successor within either imitatio or isnad through his hero’s verdadera muerte.

261

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