La maurofilia en la poesía épica medieval

Abstract

Maurophilia as a literary tradition was codified for the first time in 1938 in an article published by the French Hispanist Georges Cirot, who explored the idealized representation of Moors in sixteenth-century literature. Yet Ramón Menéndez Pidal argued that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Castilians, far from feeling any repulsion toward the Muslims of Granada, felt attracted to their exotic civilization, the oriental luxury of dress, the splendid ornament in their buildings, and their mode of riding and fighting. Maurophilia, in sum, became fashionable. Years later, Francisco Márquez Villanueva pointed out that although literary maurophilia of the sixteenth century was influenced by a Christian humanism sensible to all sorts of realities marginalized by the official world, the roots of maurophilia could be found in the Romancero of the fifteenth century. In effect, the romances fronterizos are abundantly concerned with love as well as war, and often idealize relations between Moors and Christians. They are, for the most part, showcases for Moorish regalia and chivalric pomp. According to María Rosa Lida, the positive depiction of Moors appeared for the first time in works by Don Juan Manuel. In the Libro de los estados the Moors are shown as courageous warriors, and in the Conde Lucanor there are several Moorish kings who behave as magnanimous and discreet rulers. But the Arab as a wise man or an exemplary figure appeared already in one of the sources of the Conde Lucanor, the Disciplina clericalis composed at the beginning of the twelfth century by Pedro Alfonso. On the other hand, the earliest medieval epic texts, the Poema de mio Cid and the Siete infantes de Lara, evince a sympathetic view of an enemy with whom Christians frequently allied, and with whom they lived.