La representacio?n de las relaciones hispano-musulmanas retrato del moro en el siglo XVI en El Abencerraje y A la sombra del granado /

by 1979- Mompo-Sepulveda, Patricia

This study examines the figure of the Moor in the sixteenth century Spain in two works: El Abencerraje, an anonymously written Spanish novel published between 1550 and 1560, and Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992) (translated into Spanish as A la sombra del granado) by Tariq Alí. As the first example of Morisco Literature, El Abencerraje represents the relationship between Muslims and Christians in the Iberian Peninsula. This study focuses on the superiority of the Christian Rodrigo de Narváez and the inferiority of the Moor Abindarráez. In A la sombra del granado, however, the Christian character is portrayed negatively, although in both works the Moor is represented stereotypically as an exotic figure. In addition, this study underlines the connections of both texts with Spanish history at the turn of the sixteenth century, a period full of riots and persecutions that the Muslim society suffered after the fall of Granada (1492).