Material and Symbolic Circulation Between Spain and England, 1554-1604

Abstract

Anne J. Cruz, ed. Material and Symbolic Circulation Between and England, 1554-1604. Transculturalisms, 1400-1700. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. 204 pp. $99.95.Reviewed by George VahamikosMaterial and Symbolic Circulation Between and England, 1554-1604 constitutes a valuable addition to an emerging field of scholarship on Anglo- Spanish cultural contact. Anne J. Cruz, editor of present volume, observes in her introduction that neglect of this field has arisen from failure of historians and literary critics to engage in dialogue across disciplinary, geographical, and linguistic boundaries. This wide-ranging collection of essays seeks to address this lacuna by studying what Cruz describes as various modes of exchange of material goods and circulation of systems of meaning both within and between England and Spain (xix). The contributors to this volume-an internationally recognized team of Hispanists from both sides of Atlantic-examine, in a more nuanced manner and from a variety of methodological perspectives, many material and crossings of Channel, some invited and others clearly unwelcome. What emerges from these essays, then, is a deeper, more complex understanding of shifting alliances that inform cultural interactions between and England.Material and Symbolic Exchanges, first of three subsections, addresses the physical and representative connections across channel (xix). The opening chapters, by historians William D. Phillips, Jr. and Magdalena de Pazzis Pi Corrales, provide a comprehensive introduction to Anglo-Spanish relations in second half of sixteenth century. Phillips discusses Anglo-Spanish commercial contact and related dynastic alliances since thirteenth century, addressed in terms of two countries' relation to Atlantic Europe. He concludes with salutary reminder that although England's break with Catholic Church prompts a series of disruptions that fragments tenuous unity of Atlantic, other repercussions, particularly exodus of English Catholics into Spain, result in unlikely and unexpected contact. Such exchanges anticipate later clandestine entries into England made by Jesuits during reign of Elizabeth. Pi Corrales then turns to widening rift between England and during reigns of Elizabeth I and Philip II. Her chapter takes a close look at reasons why England and did not immediately go to war: factors such as traditional Tudor-Hapsburg alliance against their perennial enemy, France, safeguarding of sea routes to northern Europe, and preservation of economic links between England and Netherlands, militate against a direct confrontation.Elizabeth Wright next examines construction of Sir Francis Drake's fearsome image in and Americas in a piece entitled From Drake to Draque: A Spanish Hero with an English Accent. Reports from released captives and diplomats alike culminate in Drake's apotheosis in Lope de Vega's 1598 epic, La Dragontea, a deeply ambivalent poem that walks an uneasy tightrope between frank admiration and politically correct loathing. Wright quite correctly sees Lope's work as a dire warning to Philip III and to a increasingly anxious about security of its New World possessions. Cruz's chapter, Vindicating Vulnerata: Cadiz and Circulation of Religious Imagery as Weapons of War, considers process of symbolic warfare in response to acts of iconoclastic violence committed during Drake's devastat- ing raid on Cadiz in 1587. Cruz focuses on how a desecrated statue of Virgin Mary, later afforded sanctuary at English Jesuit College in Valladolid, is deployed as propaganda to incite feelings of outrage and resentment in international Catholic community.The second section of essays, organized under title Circulating Fictions of Other, investigates configurations of otherness in a wide range of literary and cultural texts. …