Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor: Romance, Conversion, and Internal Orientalism

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Date

2015

Authors

Wacks, David A.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Wayne State University Press

Abstract

Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor is a medieval romance interpolated into a thirteenth-century account of the struggles of the kings of Asturias (eighth–ninth centuries) with the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordova. In this essay I demonstrate how the chronicler mapped political concerns onto courtly adventure narrative in order to promote ideologies of conquest and conversion. Flores’s conversion to Christianity in the context of his lifelong love relationship with Blancaflor is a metaphor for the Christian dream of the conquest of al-Andalus and the conversion of Iberian Muslims and Jews.

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Keywords

romance,Estoria de España,Alfonso X, Sancho IV,historiography, narrative,conversion,Orientalism

Citation

Wacks, David. “Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor: Romance, Conversion, and Internal Orientalism.” Narrative Culture 2.2 (2015): 270–288.