In the Western imagination, Spain often evokes the colorful
culture of al-Andalus, the Iberian region once ruled by Muslims.
Tourist brochures inviting visitors to sunny and romantic
Andalusia, home of the ingenious gardens and intricate arabesques
of Granada's Alhambra Palace, are not the first texts to trade on
Spain's relationship to its Moorish past. Despite the fall of
Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 and the subsequent
repression of Islam in Spain, Moorish civilization continued to
influence both the reality and the perception of the Christian
nation that emerged in place of al-Andalus.In "Exotic Nation,"
Barbara Fuchs explores the paradoxes in the cultural construction
of Spain in relation to its Moorish heritage through an analysis of
Spanish literature, costume, language, architecture, and chivalric
practices. Between 1492 and the expulsion of the Moriscos (Muslims
forcibly converted to Christianity) in 1609, Spain attempted to
come to terms with its own Moorishness by simultaneously repressing
Muslim subjects and appropriating their rich cultural heritage.
Fuchs examines the explicit romanticization of the Moors in Spanish
literature--often referred to as "literary maurophilia"--and the
complex, often silent presence of Moorish forms in Spanish material
culture. The extensive hybridization of Iberian culture suggests
that the sympathetic depiction of Moors in the literature of the
period does not trade in exoticism but instead reminded Spaniards
of the place of Moors and their descendants within Spain.
Meanwhile, observers from outside Spain recognized its cultural
debt to al-Andalus, often deliberately casting Spain as the exotic
racial other of Europe.
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