The poetics of piracy: emulating Spain in English literature

Abstract

Poetics of Piracy: Emulating in English Literature By Barbara Fuchs Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013 What would discipline of Anglo-Spanish literary relations look like if lost play by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quijote, were discovered? As Barbara Fuchs explains in introduction to her exceptional book, Poetics of Piracy: Emulating in English Literature, is Holy Grail and absent presence (1) of Anglo-Spanish culture. Poetics of Piracy is, in many ways, response to surge of high-profile interest in this absent center (1), as seen in endeavors ranging from Stephen Greenblatt's Project (2003) through Gregory Doran's rewriting of for RSC (2011) to an Arden edition of Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood (2010), an eighteenth-century adaptation of Cardenio. In introduction and final two chapters of book, Fuchs engages directly with textual history of Cardenio, offering sustained critiques of recent bibliographic, academic, and creative approaches to play in order to question its centrality to discipline and to demonstrate how its prominence is rooted in both Hispanophobia and good, old-fashioned Bardolatry. Yet, Fuchs's project is much more than an intervention in debate surrounding absence of this lost play; Poetics of Piracy skillfully and cogently exposes the Spanish connection that makes sense of Cardenio (1), vibrant, sustained, and often paradoxical networks of relations between English and Spanish culture. early modern period represents an era of tension between and England, with especially strained feelings mounting at pivotal moments such as hostilities culminating in Armada; piracy, privateering, and feud for wealth and power in New World; failed courtship of Prince Charles and Spanish Infanta; and Thirty Years' War. These incidents affected reception of Spanish texts in surprising ways. As Catholic superpower, posed significant political and ideological threats to England. English racial bigotry impacted perception of Spaniards, who were feared not only for their Catholicism but also for their supposed Moorish or Jewish heritage. Essential to national imagination and to self-construction of Englishness was differentiation from Catholic continental Europe and perception of England as strong, unique Protestant nation. Paradoxically, despite abundance of documented hostility towards readers continued to enjoy Spanish literature throughout period and steadily increasing numbers sought to learn language. As Fuchs explains, The cultural fascination with never waned, even when it was most inconvenient in military or religious terms (9). Spanish literary genres, forms, and plots inspired myriad Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, including many studied by Fuchs, yet prominent role of Spanish literature in shaping English literary culture is habitually overlooked. This, Fuchs posits, may be attributed to frequent unthinking prejudices about Spain, which she identifies as a kind of intellectual 'Black Legend' (8). Fuchs illuminates and historicizes these prejudices and returns to its rightful place of belonging in studies of transnational character of early modern English literature; she examines politically and aesthetically charged cultural traffic between and England, trac[ing] emergence of national canon for England in context of its rivalry with Spain (4), thereby providing stimulating, and more accurate, picture of English literary culture. In Chapter 1, Forcible Translation, Fuchs elucidates how English writers style their acts of imitatio and translatio of Spanish material according to metaphorical language of piracy, which evokes and glorifies forceful, hostile takeover of Spanish material. …