In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries captivity narratives written by Spanish and English captives abounded. There is a smaller corpus of such texts by Muslim captives in Spain and England, and by some travelers from the Ottoman Empire who observed their fellow Muslims in captivity. A comparative analysis illuminatingly reveals similar usage of narrative conventions, especially of hagiography and pious romances, as well as the theoretical stance of “resistance literature” taken on by many writers. I consider accounts written as truthful, historical texts alongside fictional ones, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ “The Captive’s Tale,” from Don Quixote, Part I. Writers both celebrated monolithic categories such as Protestant, Catholic, Spanish, English, and Muslim, and challenged them for differing ideological reasons. Writers constructed heroic narratives of their own travails and endurance. In the case of English narratives, didacticism plays an important role. In one case, that of John Rawlins, the account reads like Christian theology: to keep in mind, no matter how grim the situation of captivity may be, one’s identity as an Englishman. Raḍwān al-Janawī used his letters about Muslims in captivity in Portuguese-occupied Africa, in which he points out the vigorous efforts of Christian rulers to secure the liberty of their own people, to criticize Muslim rulers who, in his opinion, exerted far too little energy in rescuing their brothers and sisters from captivity. Ultimately, this essay explores the fictionality of truthful narratives and the truth in fictional ones, and the ways in which people from different cultures identified their own identities, especially against those of “the enemy.”
On Proto-Modernist Traits in Early Modern Art Theory
