This course will involve a comparative study of the representation of Islam and Muslims by non-Muslim writers in medieval and early-modern literature, mostly from the Iberian peninsula. We will look in-depth at the changing ways that Muslims appear from the early complaints of Alvarus of Córdoba, the depictions of Muslims as warriors in the Poema de Mio Cid, the polemical images in anti-Muslim polemical writings, the images of Muslims as musicians, invaders, and converts in the Cantigas de Santa María of king Alfonso X, el Sabio, and others. We will also include the shifting images of Muslims in Romancero songs, and follow the development of such images into the sixteenth century with Pérez de hita’s Guerras civiles de Granada, the novela morisca and El Abencerraje, and the immortal image of Cide Hamete, the purported Muslim author of Cervantes’ Don Quijote. We will link these shifting representations to the local, political, religious, and economic circumstances that inspired them and explore the porous and often invisible boundary between praise and polemic.

Most readings and all writing and discussion will be in Spanish.

This course counts as literature credit for the Spanish minor.