This book presents an original perspective on the variety and intensity of biblical narrative and rhetoric in the evolution of history writing in León-Castile during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It focuses on six Hispano-Latin chronicles, two of which make unusually overt and emphatic use of biblical texts. Of particular importance is the part played by the influence of exegesis that became integral to scriptural and liturgical influence, both in and beyond monastic institutions.Alun Williams provides close analysis of the text and comparisons with biblical typology to demonstrate how these historians from the north of Iberia were variously dependent on a growing corpus of patristic and early medieval interpretation to understand and define their world and their sense of place.Narrative, Piety and Polemic in Medieval Spain sees Williams examine this material as part of a comparative exploration of language and religious allusion, showing how the authors used these biblical-liturgical elements to convey historical context, purpose and interpretation.

This book presents an original perspective on the variety and intensity of biblical narrative and rhetoric in the evolution of history writing in León-Castile during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It focuses on six Hispano-Latin chronicles, two of which make unusually overt and emphatic use of biblical texts. Of particular importance is the part played by the influence of exegesis that became integral to scriptural and liturgical influence, both in and beyond monastic institutions. Alun Williams provides close analysis of the text and comparisons with biblical typology to demonstrate how these historians from the north of Iberia were variously dependent on a growing corpus of patristic and early medieval interpretation to understand and define their world and their sense of place. Narrative, Piety and Polemic in Medieval Spain sees Williams examine this material as part of a comparative exploration of language and religious allusion, showing how the authors used these biblical-liturgical elements to convey historical context, purpose and interpretation.

"Brief narratives," or medieval precursors to the modern short story, are compositions couched in the form of a tale of reasonable short length. They began with writings in Latin and, eventually, made their way into the vernacular languages of Europe. They include the fable, the apologue, the exemplum, the saint's life, the miracle, the biography, the adventure tale, the romance, the jest, and the anecdote, among others. In Spain, the oldest extant brief narratives in written form are in verse and date from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The earliest examples include La vida de Santa Maria Egipciaca and El libre dels tres reys d'Orient. Both are concise enough to be read in one sitting and were probably read before or after meals as entertainment. In Pious Brief Narrative in Medieval Castilian and Galician Verse, John E. Keller studies the structure of the pious brief narrative, including such works at the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X and Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Senora, among others. He examines which narrative techniques were employed by their authors, including versification, music, and the pictorial arts as aids to narration. Using nine basic elements—plot, setting, conflict, characterization, theme, style, effect, point of view, and mood or tone—Keller shows how writers in medieval Spain employed more sophisticated uses of these techniques than has previously been recognized.

Drawing on current critical theory, Framing Iberia relocates the Castilian classics El Conde Lucanor and El Libro de buen amor within a medieval Iberian literary tradition that includes works in Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Romance. Winner of the 2009 La corónica International Book Award for scholarship in Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

In 1322, a Jewish doctor named Abner entered a synagogue in the Castilian city of Burgos and began to weep in prayer. Falling asleep, he dreamed of a "great man" who urged him to awaken from his slumber. Shortly thereafter, he converted to Christianity and wrote a number of works attacking his old faith. Abner tells the story in fantastic detail in the opening to his Hebrew-language but anti-Jewish polemical treatise, Teacher of Righteousness. In the religiously plural context of the medieval Western Mediterranean, religious conversion played an important role as a marker of social boundaries and individual identity. The writers of medieval religious polemics such as Teacher of Righteousness often began by giving a brief, first-person account of the rejection of their old faith and their embrace of the new. In such accounts, Ryan Szpiech argues, the narrative form plays an important role in dramatizing the transition from infidelity to faith. Szpiech draws on a wide body of sources from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim polemics to investigate the place of narrative in the representation of conversion. Making a firm distinction between stories told about conversion and the experience of religious change, his book is not a history of conversion itself but a comparative study of how and why it was presented in narrative form within the context of religious disputation. He argues that between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, conversion narratives were needed to represent communal notions of history and authority in allegorical, dramatic terms. After considering the late antique paradigms on which medieval Christian conversion narratives were based, Szpiech juxtaposes Christian stories with contemporary accounts of conversion to Islam and Judaism. He emphasizes that polemical conflict between Abrahamic religions in the medieval Mediterranean centered on competing visions of history and salvation. By seeing conversion not as an individual experience but as a public narrative, Conversion and Narrative provides a new, interdisciplinary perspective on medieval writing about religious disputes.

An examination of two fifteenth-century misogynist Iberian works.

The conversos of late medieval and Golden Age Spain were Christians whose Jewish ancestors had been forced to change faiths within a society that developed a preoccupation with pure Christian lineage. The aims of this book is to shed new light on the cultural impact of this social climate, in which public suspicion of the religious sincerity of conversos became widespread and scrutiny by the Inquisition came to impede social advancement and threaten life and property. The bulk of the essays center on literary works, including lesser known and canonical pieces, which are analyzed by scholars who reveal the heterogeneous nature of textual voices that are informed by an awareness of the marginal status of conversos. Contributors are Gregory B. Kaplan, Ana Benito, Patricia Timmons, David Wacks, Bruce Rosenstock, Laura Delbrugge, Michelle Hamilton, Deborah Skolnik Rosenberg, Kevin Larsen and Luis Bejarano.

The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Medieval Iberia: Unity in Diversity draws together the innovative work of renowned scholars as well as several thought-provoking essays from emergent academics, in order to provide broad-range, in-depth coverage of the major aspects of the Iberian medieval world. Exploring the social, political, cultural, religious, and economic history of the Iberian Peninsula, the volume includes 37 original essays grouped around fundamental themes such as Languages and Literatures, Spiritualities, and Visual Culture. This interdisciplinary volume is an excellent introduction and reference work for students and scholars in Iberian Studies and Medieval Studies. SERIES EDITOR: BRAD EPPS SPANISH LIST ADVISOR: JAVIER MUÑOZ-BASOLS

This book discusses the “long fifteenth century” in Iberian history, between the 1391 pogroms and the forced conversions of Aragonese Muslims in 1526, a period characterized by persecutions, conversions and social violence, on the one hand, and cultural exchange, on the other. It was a historical moment of unstable religious ideas and identities, before the rigid turn taken by Spanish Catholicism by the middle of the sixteenth century; a period in which the physical and symbolic borders separating the three religions were transformed and redefined but still remained extraordinarily porous. The collection argues that the aggressive tone of many polemical texts has until now blinded historiography to the interconnected nature of social and cultural intimacy, above all in dialogue and cultural transfer in later medieval Iberia. Contributors are Ana Echevarría, Gad Freudenthal, Mercedes García-Arenal, Maria Laura Giordano, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Eleazar Gutwirth, Felipe Pereda, Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto, Katarzyna K. Starczewska, John Tolan, Gerard Wiegers, and Yosi Yisraeli.