Material remains : narrating the dead at al-Qaşr al-Kabīr
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- My research begins in the observation that there is a prevalence of corpses in the narrative of the early modern Western Mediterranean, and that those corpses frequently coincide with moments when narrators grapple with questions of authority and credibility. My argument is that corpses became a source of epistemic certainty as a mechanism to compensate for insufficiencies in narrative authority, and particularly for insufficiencies in the credibility of eyewitness testimony. In this dissertation, I explored the use of corpses and human bodies as repositories of epistemic certainty in accounts of the battle of al-Qasr al-Kabir, which took place in 1578 between Portuguese and Moroccan forces. Following this event, the corpses of kings and soldiers played a central role not only in determining the very viability of three Mediterranean monarchies, but were also fundamental to how stories about it were told. Using a methodological approach that combines literary analysis with a sociolinguistic understanding of presence and a historicized understanding of the epistemological status of testimony and witnessing, my project traces a shift in how reliability and authority were constructed across Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic traditions. I argue that the stories told about al-Qasr al-Kabir mark a watershed moment in how narrative was written during the early modern period, a legacy that has come down to us in canonical texts like Don Quixote and the Comentarios reales.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Spragins, Elizabeth |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Primary advisor | Surwillo, Lisa |
| Thesis advisor | Surwillo, Lisa |
| Thesis advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Key, Alexander (Alexander Matthew) |
| Advisor | Greene, Roland, 1957- |
| Advisor | Key, Alexander (Alexander Matthew) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Elizabeth Spragins. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Elizabeth Lee Spragins
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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