Frontier Narratives: Liminal Lives in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Steven Hutchinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Frontier Narratives: Liminal Lives in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Steven Hutchinson James Iffland (bio) Steven Hutchinson. Frontier Narratives: Liminal Lives in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2020. 228 pp. ISBN: 978-1-5261-4642-7. Steven Hutchinson's prominent place within the field of Cervantes scholarship has been slowly but surely consolidated over the last several decades through major works such as Cervantine Journeys (1992) and Economía ética en Cervantes (2001). With Frontier Narratives, he has bolstered his stature even further through a ground-breaking approach to the enormously complex cultural, political and economic dynamics of the early modern Mediterranean world. In many ways, Frontier Narratives could be described as a worthy companion volume to Fernand Braudel's classic The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, a work Hutchinson recognizes as a major source of inspiration for his own ambitious project. It complements the French historian's contribution in that sense that it maps, in depth, the cultural tapestry woven through the multiplex interaction between Christian and Muslim political powers, one in which Jews also played a significant role. As Hutchinson puts it with admirable succinctness: "My strategy in this book consists in part of being attentive to writing and speaking in the early modern Mediterranean world, to how people characterised the modalities of relationships and communicability of that world across ethnic, religious, geographical, linguistic and racial boundaries. The texts themselves, in a wide array of discursive genres in many languages, embody writers' and narrators' voices, but also convey other voices, all of which in one way or another characterise their world and bring us into it almost as witnesses, depending on our ability to read and listen" (1). As a scholar whose research centers largely on Cervantes, I only wish that Hutchinson's analysis had appeared much earlier in my career. My own approach to teaching Cervantes's oeuvre is now being reframed in the light of all that I have learned from reading Frontier Narratives. Though in many ways Cervantes figures as the study's unstated "protagonist," its remarkably broad compass will prove valuable not only to Hispanists working on other authors of the period (e.g., Lope) but to comparatists and even historians. [End Page 235] I say so because Hutchinson's work is truly interdisciplinary—unlike so many research efforts that appear under the interdisciplinary "brand" despite the fact that their authors have not invested the substantial effort necessary to gain command of the disciplines they are allegedly melding together. (The same might be said of much published work currently sold under the "cultural studies" moniker.) Hutchinson has done his homework, as evidenced, for example, by the book's massive bibliography which includes both primary and secondary sources in multiple languages. He has carried out the type of deep and thorough research that is becoming increasingly rare as the 21st-century academy inexorably ratchets up the demand for faculty "productivity," in turn fostering what we might call the "fast food" approach to scholarship. One can imagine that given the ambitious scope of Hutchinson's analysis and his proclivity toward exhaustive research, Frontier Narratives could well have ended up being twice as long (an untenable option within the current strictures in the academic publishing field). Hutchinson's study, however, has approached what could be considered exactly the right dimensions. When exploring the subjects that form part of his general argument he delves into enough detail so as to satisfy most readers; at the same time, they will be left with the sensation that our author could have extended himself further. Put differently, many doors have been opened in Frontier Narratives, inviting scholars to continue exploring in fertile directions. The book, I should stress, is admirably well written: its prose flows in a pleasantly accessible fashion while simultaneously being crisp and to the point. When dealing with complex theoretical matters, Hutchinson avoids arcane terminology. There are many points at which he could have easily jumped on one or another of the theoretical band wagons in vogue in literary studies, but refrains from doing so—not out of unfamiliarity with current critical trends (Bakhtin, Hayden White, and...