Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 11-26-2007 Spanish Orientalism: Washington Irving and the Romance of the Moors Michael S. Stevens Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Stevens, Michael S., "Spanish Orientalism: Washington Irving and the Romance of the Moors." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/8 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SPANISH ORIENTALISM: WASHINGTON IRVING AND THE ROMANCE OF THE MOORS by MICHAEL STEVENS Under the Direction of Denise Davidson ABSTRACT Edward Said’s description of Orientalism as a constitutive element of the modern West is one of the enduring concepts of cultural history. The Orientalism thesis begins with the observation that in the 19th century Westerners began describing the "Orient," particularly the Middle East and India, as a place that was once gloriously civilized but had declined under the influence of incompetent Islamic governments. This construction was then employed to justify Western Imperialism and the expansion of Christianity into Asia. This dissertation examines a case of Orientalism with a twist. Between 1775 and 1830 a group of Anglophone writers and artists depicted Spain as a state with a cultural trajectory similar to that described by the Orientalists. But in the Spanish case, the glorious past was the age of the Islamic Moors who had ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula from 700 until 1492, while the current Christian rulers were the backwards and religiously intolerant impediments to progress. Thus the case of Spanish Orientalism employs an argument structurally identical to Said’s Orientalism, with the role of the Christians and Muslims reversed. In examining this phenomenon, I focus on three particular issues. The first is the representation of the Moors in early modern European popular culture. I argue that these earlier traditions use the Moors as an emblematic manifestation of oppositionality to the centralizing state and elite authority. The romantics found in the Moors a symbol comparable to such other proto-Europeans as the Celts and the Goths, worthy predecessors to the warlike, chivalric, and liberty-loving modern Europeans. The second is the political context of Spanish Orientalism. Like “classical” Orientalism, Spanish Orientalism had a clear political payoff. Its articulators meant to show that the Spanish government was an unworthy steward of its rapidly disintegrating empire, thus Spanish Orientalism is closely associated with attempts to assert Anglophone authority in the Caribbean. Third, I examine in detail the work of the author most clearly associated with Spanish Orientalism, Washington Irving. In the four books he wrote while in Spain during the 1820s, Irving became the individual most responsible for reframing the long representational tradition of the Moors into a modern idiom and bringing it to a mass audience. INDEX WORDS: Orientalism, Washington Irving, Alexander Hill Everett, Spanish- American diplomatic relations, Romanticism, The Moors, Early modern popular culture SPANISH ORIENTALISM: WASHINGTON IRVING AND THE ROMANCE OF THE MOORS by MICHAEL S. STEVENS A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2007 Copyright by Michael Stanley Stevens 2007 SPANISH ORIENTALISM: WASHINGTON IRVING AND THE ROMANCE OF THE MOORS by MICHAEL S. STEVENS Major Professor: Denise Davidson Committee: Maria Gindhart David McCreery Christine Skwiot Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2007 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES v ABBREVIATIONS vii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The Moors and Spain in Medieval and Early Modern European 18 Culture Figures for Chapter 1 51 2 Spanish Orientalism: Anglophone Representation of Moorish 59 Spain 1775-1818 Figures for Chapter 2 102 3 Alexander Hill Everett, Diplomat and Scholar 116 4 Everett in Spain: Diplomacy and Romantic Culture 147 5 The Isle of the Manhattoes: Knickerbocker Village or Yankee El 187 Dorado? 6 Washington Irving, A Transatlantic Writer 225 7 Irving in Spain 257 Figures for Chapter 7 297 CONCLUSION 302 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 v List of Figures Figures from Chapter 1 Figure 1. Il Capitano 51 Figure 2. Capitan Matamoros 51 Figure 3. Dance of Saint Sebastian; Hobby Horses 52 Figure 4. Jacques Callot, Two Pantaloons 53 Figure 5. Jacques Callot, Frontispiece, Sfessania 54 Figure 6. Jacques Callot, Sfessania 54 Figure 7. Jacques Callot, Sfessania 55 Figure 8. Anonymous Painting after Sfessania 56 Figure 9. Jacques Callot, War of Love 57 Figure 10. Jacques Callot, War of Love 58 Figures from Chapter 2 Figure 11. Diego Velazquez, Water-Seller 101 Figure 12. Henry Swinburne, Court of the Lions 102 Figure 13. Henry Swinburne, Gates of the Alhambra 103 Figure 14. James Cavanah Murphy, The Alhambra 104 Figure 15. James Cavanah Murphy, Plan of Batalha 105 Figure 16. James Cavanah Murphy, West Elevation of Batalha 106 Figure 17. Jose de Hermosillo, Lion Fountain 107 Figure 18. James Cavanah Murphy, Hall of the Baths 108 Figure 19. View of Arcade 109 Figure 20. Henry Swinburne, Great Bath 109 Figure 21. James Cavanah Murphy, Hall of the Ambassadors 110 Figure 22. James Cavanah Murphy, Court and Lion Fountain 111 Figure 23. View of Lion Fountain 112 Figure 24. James Cavanah Murphy, Scene from a Painting 113 Figure 25. View of Painting 113 Figure 26. James Cavanah Murphy, Marble Basin 114 Figure 27. View of Marble Basin 114 Figure 28. View of Marble Basin 114 vi Images from Chapter 7 Figure 29. David Wilkie, Benvenuto Cellini 296 Figure 30. David Wilkie, Distraining for Rent 297 Figure 31. David Wilkie, Washington Irving in the Archives 298 Figure 32. David Wilkie, Maid of Saragossa 299 Figure 33. David Wilkie, Columbus at La Rabida 300 vii Abbreviations AHEP Alexander Hill Everett Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston. CWWI Irving, Washington. The Complete Works of Washington Irving. Ed. Ralph M. Aderman, Herbert L. Kleinfield, and Jennifer S. Banks. 28 vols. Boston: Twayne, 1979. PHC Clay, Henry. The Papers of Henry Clay. Ed. James F. Hopkins. University Press of Kentucky, 1972. PMI Irving, Pierre M. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. 4 Volumes. New York: Putnam, 1864. STW Williams, Stanley T. The Life of Washington Irving. 2 Volumes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1935. viii Preface and Acknowledgments This dissertation deals with the books Washington Irving wrote about Spain between 1828 and 1832, The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, The Companions of Columbus, and Tales of the Alhambra. It turns out that these books require a lot of explanation. I encountered them during my first year as a history graduate student and across almost two centuries they inspired both an immense admiration for the author and an evocative array of issues. These issues range widely, from diplomatic wrangling over political authority in the post-colonial Caribbean basin, to the emergence of the modern category of “the artist” as a function of capitalism, to the relationship between the Enlightenment and romanticism. In large part, I have focused on a case study in Orientalism, the depiction of the Spanish Moors. My attempt to do justice to the many issues the books raise has resulted in a dissertation perhaps wider than it is deep and since this is not typical for a dissertation, a little background seems called for. My mother took me to art galleries when I was a little kid, and from the beginning I understood that the paintings in the gallery had a lot to say. Most of my adult life I had a vague notion that I would like to be an art history teacher somewhere along the line. When the same capitalist system Washington Irving negotiated so skillfully presented me with a golden handshake in the late 1990s I began to pursue that goal, albeit fitfully, as an art history graduate student at Georgia State University. I enjoyed the program thoroughly, and about half way through, after a last minute flakeout by what I now realize must have been some underpaid adjunct, I was drafted to teach an art history ix survey class. The highly intimidating prospect of keeping the attention of a big roomful of undergraduates led to frantic study and preparation, and helped crystallize a notion that already had started to form: I seemed to be more interested in the historical context and cultural implications of the images I was projecting on the screen than in their compositional effects or esthetic nuances. I spent the term reading desperately in European history to establish some context: What exactly was the Reformation? How did the French Revolution change David’s subject matter? Why is Impressionism called the art of the bourgeoisie? After the semester concluded I came back to one book that seemed to discuss images the way I wanted to think about them, Simon Schama’s Citizens. With that inspiration I walked over to the Georgia State History Department office, knocked on the door of the Director of Graduate Studies and explained I was interested in doing further graduate work in “art…history, but, like…the ‘history…of the art’, not ‘art history’ if you know what I’m trying to say.” It turned out that he did know what I was trying to say, and in fact he actually had a name for it, “cultural history.” By then I had decided my master’s thesis needed to address some major event in European culture and I picked a good one, the encounter between Europe and the Americas.