Prosperous Minorities in the Literary Corsair Economy

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_1384
dc.title	Prosperous Minorities in the Literary Corsair Economy. Brahín in Los cautivos de Argel and David in Guzmán el Bravo
dc.contributor.author	Gordon Michael
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	es
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/rassegna-iberistica/2018/109/minorias-prosperas-en-la-economia-corsaria-literar/
dc.description.abstract	Spanish literature written by captives or about captivity in North Africa distinguished itself from the majority of Spanish Golden Age works because of its positive portrayal of Jews. Not only were these literary representations benevolent, but they were also quite realistic. Like many of their historical counterparts, the literary Jews Brahín (Los cautivos de Argel) and David (Guzmán el Bravo) practiced their religion clandestinely in Spain before moving to the Maghreb, where they enjoyed greater freedoms and privileges, including the ability to legally own Christian slaves. Multiple 17th-century autobiographical accounts from Spanish captives in Algiers and Tunis can serve as historical templates to corroborate the precarious, yet simultaneously prosperous, situation of those two literary Jews. Finally, the similarities found in historical sources and these two North African works challenges the notion of Lope de Vega being unequivocally anti-Jewish.
dc.relation.ispartof	Rassegna iberistica
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 41 \| Issue 109 \| June 2018
dc.issued	2018-06-11
dc.dateAccepted	2017-10-27
dc.dateSubmitted	2017-07-18
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2037-6588
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Ri/2037-6588/2018/109/002
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Algiers
dc.subject	Algiers
dc.subject	Captives
dc.subject	Captives
dc.subject	Jews
dc.subject	Jews
dc.subject	Lope de Vega
dc.subject	Lope de Vega
dc.subject	Tunis
dc.subject	Tunis

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Brahín in Los cautivos de Argel and David in Guzmán el Bravo

Michael Gordon University of North Carolina, Wilmington, USA

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abstract

Spanish literature written by captives or about captivity in North Africa distinguished itself from the majority of Spanish Golden Age works because of its positive portrayal of Jews. Not only were these literary representations benevolent, but they were also quite realistic. Like many of their historical counterparts, the literary Jews Brahín (Los cautivos de Argel) and David (Guzmán el Bravo) practiced their religion clandestinely in Spain before moving to the Maghreb, where they enjoyed greater freedoms and privileges, including the ability to legally own Christian slaves. Multiple 17th-century autobiographical accounts from Spanish captives in Algiers and Tunis can serve as historical templates to corroborate the precarious, yet simultaneously prosperous, situation of those two literary Jews. Finally, the similarities found in historical sources and these two North African works challenges the notion of Lope de Vega being unequivocally anti-Jewish.

Published

June 11, 2018

Accepted

Oct. 27, 2017

Submitted

July 18, 2017

Language

Keywords: Captives • Lope de Vega • Tunis • Jews • Algiers

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Ri/2037-6588/2018/109/002

Copyright: © 2018 Michael Gordon. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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