Memories of Medieval Iberia in Early Modern Spain: The romancero viejo As Neomedievalism

Abstract

This article proposes a new reading of four romances viejos as one of the earliest forms of neomedievalism in early modern Spain. First printed in the sixteenth century, but set between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, these romances emphasize Christian Iberia’s fragmentariness and disempowerment in relation to other medieval polities. This contrasts with other sixteenth-century neomedievalisms, from maurophile rewritings of the fifteenth-century Nasrid Kingdom of Granada to romances fronterizos. It concludes that they remind their early modern audiences of Iberia’s porosity and historic as well as ongoing interactions with other Mediterranean and northern European cultures.