Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early Modern SpainU of Minnesota Press - 202 pages Forcibly expelled from Spain in the early seventeenth century, the substantial Muslim community known as the moriscos left behind them a hidden yet extremely rich corpus of manuscripts. Copied out in Arabic script and concealed in walls, false floors, and remote caves, these little-known texts now offer modern readers an absorbing look into the cultural life of the moriscos during the hundred years between their forced conversion to Christianity and their eventual expulsion. Covert Gestures reveals how the traditional Islamic narratives of the moriscos both shaped and encoded a wide range of covert social activity characterized by a profound and persistent concern with time and temporality. Using a unique blend of literary analysis, linguistic anthropology, and phenomenological philosophy, Barletta explores the narratives as testimonials of past human experiences and discovers in them evidence of community resistance. In its interdisciplinary approach, Vincent Barletta's work is nothing less than a rewriting of the cultural history of Muslim Spain, as well as a replotting of the future course of medieval and early modern literary studies. |
Contents
1 Toward an ActivityCentered Approach to AljamiadoMorisco Narrative | 1 |
2 Written Narrative and the Human Dimension of Time | 31 |
3 Contexts of Rediscovery Contexts of Use | 56 |
4 The Prophet Is Born Muslims Are Made | 79 |
5 A Morisco Philosophy of Suffering and Action | 104 |
6 Language Ideologies and Poetic Form | 133 |
Other editions - View all
Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early ... Vincent Barletta No preview available - 2005 |
Covert Gestures: Crypto-Islamic Literature as Cultural Practice in Early ... Vincent Barletta No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham al-Awwal alfakíes Alhadith del xakrifixiyo aljamiado aljamiado-morisco literature aljamiado-morisco texts Allah Allahu akbar analysis annabi Arabic language Arabic script Aragonese crypto-Muslims Aragonese Moriscos argued Biblioteca Nacional BRAH Castile and Aragon Castilian and Aragonese Christian complex context crypto-Muslims cuaderna vía cultural practice discourse dixo diya edited Eid al-Adha encoded engaged Estébanez folios frame frameworks Galmés de Fuentes Gayangos genre Granada Hadith Hadith de Yuçuf handwritten Heidegger’s Historia human Iberian peninsula interaction intersect Ishmael kalamador language ideologies Libro linguistic literary luces Madrid manuscript copies manuscript texts Mawlid meaning mediate medieval Morisco communities Morisco scribes Muhammad Muslim narrative texts performance Poema de Yuçuf poetic present Prophet Qur’anic readers reading Real Academia Real Academia Española relation religious sense shape socially embedded Spain Spanish specific story temporal textual tion tokó torpex traditional Islamic Western Apache written narratives written texts xakrifixiyo de Isma’il Ziryab
Popular passages
Page xiii - In short, the practically cognized present is no knife-edge, but a saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which we sit perched, and from which we look in two directions into time.
References to this book
Framing Iberia: Maqāmāt and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain David A. Wacks No preview available - 2007 |