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Abstract
This essay examines the transformation of the landscape into a maritime space in Ginés Pérez de Hita's narration of the episode of Galera in his Guerra de los moriscos. By identifying the Alpujarras with Augustan landscapes, the author places the text in a dialectical relationship with the most famous epic account of the indigenous rebellion in Chile: Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana. The suggestive panoramas that emerge from this refiguration of the topography yield unexpected connections between contested places within the Spanish world (Alpujarras–Mediterranean–Chile–North Africa). Moreover, this network of places situates the rebellion vis-à-vis a decisive battle in the struggle for the Mediterranean: Lepanto. Through his highly original geography, Pérez de Hita advances novel notions of global expansion that call into question the political and moral consequences of the imperial enterprise and reveal the fragmentary nature of ostensibly powerful, monolithic global structures.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ricardo Padrón and Pablo J. Davis for their comments on an earlier version of this essay.
Notes
1. Citations are from Joaquín Gil Sanjuán's edition. The best-seller Guerras civiles de Granada, part 1 (1595) was a sympathetic novelization of the last days of the chivalrous Moor before the fall of Granada. Part 2 (1619) is a rawer recounting of the Morisco rebellion against the new laws from the Royal Council in Madrid in 1567 (Pragmáticas) and banning Morisco cultural practices toward full assimilation, and of Spanish military repression of the uprising. Until recently, Part 2 was only studied by historians. Menéndez Pelayo labeled it as “inferior” to the first, useful only as a historical source (2: 149) – echoing George Ticknor's characterization of it as “imperfect” historical romance (3:135-36). While Guerra was less imitated than Part 1, its literary legacy is present in Martínez de la Rosa's historical drama Aben-Humeya (1830), Pedro Antonio de Alarcón's La Alpujarra (1873), and Manuel Fernández y González's novel Los monfies de la Alpujarra (1856).
2. William Hickling Prescott is first to label the phrase a “Castilian proverb,” quoting it to gloss the situation in Galera (127), yet the phrase appears neither in contemporary “refraneros” nor later compilations.
3. I adopt Edward W. Soja's notion of emplacement: the process by which the social is actively located, or emplaced, in space and time (11).
4. This reading of Guerras civiles de Granada, Part 2, interpellates the elaboration of global worlds from local perspectives, yet does not pursue Walter Mignolo's interest in local history as the space where the restitution of the subaltern occurs. As this essay will make clear, my reading conceives of the global as a multipolar phenomenon.
5. The author tells readers that he copies the episode verbatim from the account of a participant in the siege, Thomás Pérez de Evia, and does so given the narration's ostensibly chronological nature and the “desapasionada verdad con gravedad y desenfado de estilo.” The narration proves neither dispassionate nor fully temporal, as this study shows. Attributing Part 1 to Aben Hamin amounts to a similar gesture of rhetorical distancing – a metahistorical strategy reinforced by the absence of a specific text linking the episode of Galera to Pérez de Evia. Indeed, Pérez de Hita's literary praxis suggests that this was a common operation for him. His contemporary, Padre Arce, recounts asking him about the Arabic stories, to which he replied that he knew no Arabic nor had seen said stories, and “dixo esto por autorizar lo que había fingido.” See Gil Sanjuán xxxii.
6. Menéndez Pelayo attributed the story's ostensibly fragmentary nature to the disorganized and unpolished quality of a shoemaker's prose. Later critics ascribed the story's disjointedness to the author's intent to convey the horrors of war and to portray facts as he saw them. The latest biographical studies of Guerras civiles de Granada, Part 1 by Pérez Correa, reveal Pérez de Hita as a rather prominent member of the shoemaking guild, part of the Murcian bourgeoisie, and active in its literary circles (xv). The struggle to maintain a temporal–spatial scheme is far from a detached eyewitness's report – even such testimony entails an inherent subjectivity. Joaquín Gil Sanjuán suggests a pattern of progression that highlights the leadership of the Marquis of Vélez, the Marquis of Mondéjar, the Duke of Sesa, and John of Austria progressively (liv-lvi). This proposal ascribes the organization of the text to a teleological rationale that does not resolve the fragmentary nature of the structure and prose.
7. Hurtado and Mármol fashioned the events in the Alpujarras as epics of imperial expansion that fulfilled a prophecy of triumph over Islam and secured the monarchy's inheritance of the Roman Empire. These historians weave the events into a larger, cohesive tapestry of global conquest. Similarly, Juan Rufo's La Austríada projects the war as an absolute success over the Muslims, and Galera as a smaller, solely local episode of resistance in the Alpujarras (79).
8. Authors locate this tradition in the Histories of Rasis, and it is present in Hurtado de Mendoza, Mármol Carvajal and other contemporary local histories. With ironic wit, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón points to the controversy over place names, concluding that readers must choose “la opinión que más le guste o le convenga” (101–3).
9. There is no extant, sixteenth or seventeenth century map or city views of Galera, nor is the description of Galera as resembling a galera (galley) to be found in predecessors, contemporaries, or successors of Pérez de Hita.
10. Among others, this representation is present on pp. 247, 248, 250, 251, 255, 262, 268, 269, 272, 273, 278, 281, and 284.
11. In the center were to be seen brazen ships with Actium's battle, one might see all Leucate aglow with War's array, and the waves ablazed with gold. Here Augustus Caesar, leading Italians to strife […] Here Anthonious with barbaric might and varied arms, victor from the nations of the dawn and from the ruddy Indian sea, brings with him Egypt, and the strength of the East and utmost Bactra […] All rush on at once, and the whole sea foams, uptorn by the sweeping oars, and triple-pointed beaks. To the deep they speed; thou wouldst deem the Cyclades, uprooted, were floating on the main, or that mountains high clashed with mountains: in such mighty ships the seaman assail the towered sterns (8.675-693).
12. James Nicolopulos coins “eclectic web of epic prophecy” to describe Ercilla's integration of remote and central spheres of the imperial enterprise through a tapestry of variegated imitation (65–117). Anthony Pagden focuses on ideologies behind Hapsburg's imperial aspirations. Marie Tanner studies the use of mythical imagery to justify claim to Imperial Rome. David A. Lupher traces the adoption of triumphalist narratives in New World debates.
13. Quint situates The Aeneid more along the epics of victors than of losers (30). Nevertheless, Craig Kallendorf and R.O.A.M. Lyne encountered pessimistic readings in Virgil. Pérez de Hita exemplifies a praxis of early modern imitation where emulation involves acknowledgment of the original text regardless of its original allegiances, leads to parody, and resolves in tension. I follow Thomas M. Greene's notion of dialectical imitation.
14. “El morisco que se escogió para este caso fue tan astuto y sagáz como aquel Sinón que fue enviado de parte de los Griegos á los del Troyano vando” (107).
15. Virgil's Sinon conveys internal discontent: “Often the Greeks longed to quit Troy, compass a retreat, and depart, weary with the long war; and how I wish that they had done so!” (108).
16. Virgil reports that “Butes she pierced with spear-point in the back, ‘twixt corslet and helm, where the rider's neck gleams and the shield hangs from the left arm” (690–94; emphasis added).
17. All citations are from Isaías Lerner's edition.
18. Fernando de Herrera's Guerra de Chipre (Seville, 1572), a popular account written in prose, never attained the influence exerted by Ercilla's poem. These motifs are not present in Luis de Camões's Os Lusíadas.
19. Después de haber un rato satisfecho/ la codicia vista en las pinturas,/mirando de los muros, suelo y techo/la gran riqueza de varias esculturas,/el mago me llevó al globo derecho/ y vuelto allí de rostro a las figuras,/con el corvo cayado señalando,/comenzó de enseñarme, así hablando (23, 62–69; emphasis added) […] Y esta bola que ves y compostura/es del mundo gran término abreviado (79–80; emphasis added).
20. For historiography see Niccoló Capponi's work; J. López de Toro and M. Gaylord Randel study the impact of this perspective in the literary realm.