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"The origins of present-day Ibero-American racialization, and of associated caste hierarchies in various Latin American regions and societies, are in many ways traceable to the medieval Iberian Peninsula during the era of the so-called Reconquest (eleventh through fifteenth centuries). Focusing on themes of race, caste, and indigeneity during a period straddling the boundary between the Middle Ages and the era of New World exploration, conquest, and colonization (early-thirteenth through mid-sixteenth centuries), this study explores the already highly internationalized world of late-medieval and early-modern Europe as revealed in various kinds of travel narrative. The works surveyed include conquest narratives, touristic and diplomatic diaries, gazetteers, chivalric romances and biographies, pilgrimage accounts, and political essays. Despite their stylistic and thematic variety, the works are linked by a shared compulsion to go forth among alien folk, and by a Eurocentric obsession with ethnicity, status, native identity, and what we would call globalization"--
List of contents
Introduction 1. Concepts of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Iberia 2. Race 3. Caste 4. Indigeneity Conclusion: The Tourist in the Text
About the author
Michael Harney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and Comparative Literature Program at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
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"In this elegantly written book, Michael Harney invites us to reread a vast corpus of texts challenging often taken-for-granted knowledges and assumptions on travel literature. A product of meticulous research and based on a wide range of works, genres, and disciplines, drawing together literature and history, Michael Harney offers new insights and fresh perspectives on the issues of race, caste, and indigeneity in Medieval Iberia. Lucid and provocative but dispassionate and evenhanded at the same time, this book is not just a welcome addition to the growing bibliography on travel and travellers, but also an essential and masterful contribution to the study of Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic literatures." - Aníbal A. Biglieri, Professor of Spanish Medieval Literature, University of Kentucky, USA
"Michael Harney's Race, Caste, and Indigeneity in Medieval Spanish Travel Literature is an innovative approach to understanding how attitudes towards non-European peoples that were formed during the Reconquest later informed fictional travel and chivalric narratives, and subsequently the values and expectations of the explorers and colonizers of the New World. Harney's text is an indispensable read not only for those who study travel literature, but for all scholars concerned with the social order established in the colonies and its long-term consequences." - Nancy F. Marino, University Distinguished Professor of Romance and Classical Studies, Michigan State University, USA
