María Rosa Menocal (1953–2012)

Definitely recommend this well-organized and well-told account of the history of what might be called “the Moorish years” of Andalusian history.

What I most appreciated about the book is that Menocal doesn’t just make this about wars, borders, plagues, and religious conflict, as so many other histories do. She’s more interested in telling the story of how certain attributes of Moorish culture –their ability to assimilate into different cultures, their robust language, their elegant show more architecture, their intellectual curiosity, their storytelling traditions, their social egalitarianism, their respect for fellow “Peoples of the Book” – created a brief window of opportunity for people representing a variety of different cultures, religions and languages not just to coexist, but to cross-pollinate: genetically, ethnically, linguistically, intellectually.

And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it: the linguistic traces of Arabic in modern Spanish language, the Arabic foods and ingredients absorbed into European culinary traditions, the Arabic architecture of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, the critical contributions of Arabic scientists and mathematicians, the influence of as Ibn Rushd/Averrios on Thomas Aquinas, the influence of A Thousand and One Nights on Bocaccio, on Chaucer, on Cervantes ….

Which is not intended to imply that Menocal's choice to focus on culture in any way undermines the value of this book as a history of the years ~750-1450. The author most definitely knows her period and how to present the rapid succession of leaders, countries, empires, and religions as a clear and compelling narrative. Her particular gift: selecting anecdotes that don’t merely repeat information she’s already presented, but that add additional context and depth.

The book works as a history but also as an elegy, a reflection upon a brief moment in time when political, racial, and religious intolerance relented long enough to provide a glimpse of what the world might have looked like without them. Recommended without any caveats or conditions. show less

This is a delightful romp through almost a thousand years of the Spanish history. It doesn't attempt to be comprehensive, but instead is a series of snapshots, with enough connections sketched in to keep the story coherent. The main theme is the notion of a first-class mind, from F. Scott Fitzgerald, applied here to cultures. There are four streams entangled - the three Abrahamic faiths along with the Greeks, mostly Aristotle.

I've seen references to the richness of Andalusian culture. This show more was a splendid way to dive in a little deeper. It leaves me with too many threads to follow! Never to be bored!

It was a strange enough coincidence that this book was written just before the attacks of 9/11/2001. That we seem to be getting trapped more tightly in battles over ideological purity is really sad. show less

Meaningful silences punctuate our lives. How silent is a first kiss, yet how potentially significant?

In this history of literary histories, Menocal delves deeply into a hush that fell on certain theses -- certain most undesireable theses -- as the 19th century dawned. She deftly traces an intellectual theory of the birth of the poetry of courtly love from Dante's level Latin language defense of the vernacular through Schlegal's mind-numbing dismissal through those enormous silences of the show more 19th and 20th centuries and on to the more riotous days of her student youth.

The theory -- that most undesirable, unimaginable theory -- would potentially root the emergence of European vernacular poetry of the troubadours not in a moment of proto-French genius summoning rhymes of courtly love from the mists but in a moment of Andalusian (and distinctly Mozarabic) brilliance that recreates and recasts the worlds and sounds before it.

Wisely, in this magical tale of literary and linguistic adventures, Menocal does not begin with the theory itself, which has been researched, argued, buttressed, and reinforced from Medieval times to the present, in many languages and many times. Instead, she launches into the poetry of the many cultures of the time, both Romance and Arabic, and then moves on to the history of the silence. We hear Dante struggling in Latin with thoughts on the vernacular and the sources of his inspiration; we hear Arabic and Mozarabic speaking women finding new masters among the Christians as the Reconquista commences, we hear forms emerge from the classical Arabic and in the Mozarabic and Provencal and Sicilian vernaculars, and then, we hear silence. First, Schlegel's dismissal: "they" don't love or treat women as "we" do; "our" love and our poetry are ours alone, not theirs; we listen to the ignorance and intense pride of emergent Europe, and we watch as the theory is isolated and sequestered among the Arabists. The silence falls.

Understanding the history of the theory reveals the theory itself, playing out in the world in which the poetry and conceptions of courtly love emerged. Menocal raises question after question, all good questions, but denies us the answers. We can look and listen for ourselves. She gives us ears.

This is a personal work, autobiographical in places, exploring a personal intellectual history written on a grand scale. Much of Menocal's thesis is unsurprising to today's historians - indeed, her discussion of the interaction of Islamic, Judaic and Christian cultures on the fringes of Medieval Catholic Christendom, whether in Al-Andalus, the islands of the Mediterranean, the Byzantine empire and its successors, or the ever-changing Slavic lands, would be self-evident among the historians with whom I studied. But in the world of Romance literature and literary history, the interaction and cross-pollination, the notion of Arabic genes in European poetry undermines fundamental mythologies that are deeply resilent and shape the very basis of the "western canon". The clash of history and mythology can be among the most challenging and deeply personal of dialectics; the recognition of the unity of the mythological and historically can be fundamentally shocking. Menocal leads us through her and now our journey.

So, in this deeply poetical work, Menocal breaks through the silence to listen to voices that have spoken to us for centuries. It was never truly silent anyways: that first kiss always fills the silence, laying open new possibilities. So with Menocal: read carefully and inherit a broader world, one whose words and emotions are freed from a narrow pennisula. The possibilities.... show less

While reading this book, I vacillated between rating it a 3, 4, or 5. Upon finishing the book, including the last chapter and prologue, I could not rate it any less than 5. The author addresses very complex issues and history in an understandable way. I thought there was too much redundancy in the third quarter of the book, however I was brought out of that when I read the last of the book. Everything came together.
Religious and cultural tolerance and intolerance exist simultaneously among show more one race. Ones' beliefs become who one is and is a vital part of self- and community-identity. This is a complexity with which humans have dealt for eternity. To find one place where the essence of tolerance lived in-between eras of intolerance then expand upon its origins and demise is to the author's credit. That she is able to present it in an easy to read framework reflects her genius.
I have not yet read Decameron or Don Quixote, but will do so now with a much greater understanding of the books' contexts than if I had read them prior to reading this wonderful book. show less