The Eve of Spain demonstrates how the telling and retelling of Spain's founding myth played a central role in the formation of that country's national identity. King Roderick, the last Visigoth king of Spain, rapes (or seduces) La Cava, the daughter of his friend and counselor, Count Julian. The count returns to Africa, gathers an army of Moors, and returns to Spain to avenge his daughter. So begins the Muslim conquest and the end of Visigoth rule. A few years later, in Northern Spain, Pelayo initiates a Christian resistance and a new line of kings to which the present-day Spanish monarchy traces its roots.Patricia E. Grieve traces the evolution of this story from the Middle Ages into the modern era, as shifts in religious tolerance and cultural acceptance influenced its telling. She explains how increasing anti-Semitism was woven into the tale during the Christian conquest of the peninsula -- in the form of traitorous Jewish conspirators. In the sixteenth century, the tale was linked to the looming threat of the Ottoman Turks. The story continued to resonate through the Enlightenment and into modern historiography, revealing the complex interactions of racial and religious conflict and evolving ideas of women's sexuality.In following the story of La Cava, Roderick, and Pelayo, Grieve explains how foundational myths and popular legends articulate struggles for national identity. She explores how myths are developed around few historical facts, how they come to be written into history, and how people exploit them politically, as in the eventual expulsion of the Jews from Spain and, later, of the Morsicos in 1609. Finally, Grieve focuses on the misogynistic elements of the story and asks why the fall of Spain is figured as a story about a woman's sexuality.
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPrologueAct One: Fall and Redemption (711-1492)1. Setting the StageOf Women, Kings, and NationOrigins of a National Myth2. Granada Is the BrideUsing History to Shape a National PastLa Cava and the King... and Pelayo and His Sister""She Came to Him in His Prison Cell""The Jewess of Toledo and Rising Anti-Semitism3. Blood Will OutThe Return of the GothsCorral Casts Spain's Founding MythTraining Isabel, the Princess of AsturiasIsabel, the Warrior QueenBad Women and Good in the Late Fifteenth CenturyThe Inquisition and the Holy Child of La GuardiaThe Fallen and the PromiseAct Two: Promise and Fulfillment (1492-1700)Interlude4. Desiring the NationThe Influence of Pedro de Corral's Chronicle of King Rodrigo in the Sixteenth CenturyThe Woman's Body and the Fate of the NationThe Loss of Spain in the Oral Ballad TraditionPhilip II's Chronicler, Ambrosio de Morales, and the Development of the Heroic PelayoPhilip II and the Power of Prophecy5. Here Was Troy, Farewell Spain!A Tale of TalesMiguel de Luna and Spain's Prophetic HistoryFather Juan de Mariana and Early Modern NationalismSpain's Second HelenLope de Vega and the Stage of King and NationThe Legend of the Fall of Spain after the ExpulsionEither Rise or FallAct Three: Imagining Spain (The Enlightenment to the Present)6. Ancestral Ghosts and New BeginningsThe Challenge of Foundational Myths in the Age of EnlightenmentFallen Women Take the StageOrientalism, Romanticism, and Visigothic SpainThe Search for Spanish National Identity in Medieval SpainPelayo, the Role of Women, and Contemporary SpainThe Founding Myth and the New MillenniumEpilogue: Cultural DialoguesNotesBibliographyIndex
""This is an ambitious work, the scope of which is temporarily and thematically enormous... this study adds a very important layer to the ongoing debate about the nature of interfaith relations in pre-modern Iberia and the role ethnic and religious diversity played in shaping Spanish culture from the colonial era through to the twentieth century.""
