Good afternoon.
My name is Catherine Infante from Amherst College,
and today I'll be talking about
the materials of captivity
in the early modern Mediterranean.
The constant contacts and
the space
between Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean world
facilitated
a number of contacts and
exchanges that allowed
members of different faiths to
come in contact with each other.
The frequent encounters between Christians and Muslims,
captives, slaves, corsairs, renegades.
redemptionist
friars, merchants among many others
populate the pages of many of the texts
in 16th and 17th century Spain.
Of course, by celebrated authors
like Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de
Vega.
Likewise, paintings such as this one by Francisco Pacheco
representing the
arrival of captives back to
Early modern Europe, represents also another canvas to think about the
ways that people of diverse
experiences understood
this,
these encounters and these exchanges that
took place because of the captivity,
human captivity.
While many of these accounts
of exchanges and encounters can tell us a
lot about the people, what is also
interesting is what
these texts
can also tell us about the objects that shared the space
and circulated between
shores of the Mediterranean Sea, many of them
following the same trajectories as the humans.
Objects such as
clothing, silk,
jewels, coral, food, religious
objects, among many other goods
were also stolen, bought,
exchanged, sold,
alongside the human captives.
And the traces of this material is incorporated into many texts
and by studying these objects, we can also learn a lot
about the social
relations that took place during this time.
In the next few minutes I'd like to just
consider one case study,
from Miguel de Cervantes El amante
liberal, a short story
or a novela, published
in his novelas ejemplares in 1613,
to think about the
ways that objects
and the materials of captivity
what that can tell us about
the human relations
that took place.
This novela tells the story of two young
Sicilians, Leonisa and Ricardo
who were taken captive off the shores of Sicily,
which was under the Spanish crown,
and they're taken captive
to Cyprus,
under Ottoman rule at the time,
and they finally recuperate their freedom at the end of the story.
While it's a fictional tale,
of course, many of the elements in the narrative
also speak to Miguel de Cervantes own experience
as a captive
in Algiers from 1575 to 1580.
This novela offers a fascinating
Case study, I think, to think about the question
of objects and materials of captivity,
because it also shows how these
identities are negotiated within the work and how
these objects influence the
cultural encounters among the characters.
In particular, I'm thinking
about a dress that
one
of the main characters, Leonisa, is dressed in, this
"habito berberisco"
or a North African costume perhaps similar to this one
shown on the screen and in this costume book
representing the dress of North Africa.
When she's taken by
captive by a crew of Turkish pirates off the coast of Trapani
she then becomes a
property of a Jewish merchant who dresses her lavishly
in this
Habito
Berberisco, this North African dress that's
lavishly
covered
with gold embroidered silk
and crimson
taffeta veil
and it's described in a lot of detail.
It also. She circulates also,
she travels on a boat,
that is also filled with
other textiles and objects,
perhaps
stolen that the merchant
has the intention
to trade
along
with this
human captive, Leonisa.
And as
we see the dress
plays an important role
in shaping the social relations between the cast of
Christian, Muslim and Jewish characters in the
text.
Before I talk a little bit more about
this specific
example and her dress and the materials
of captivity, I want to think for just a moment
about how the captives
also presented themselves visually
when they returned
from the Muslim Mediterranean to
Spain, for example.
They publicly enacted
processions and in these processions
and ceremonies, many of them were required
to to take
part in. Between 1561 and 1692
some 90 fundraising processions of ransom captives
took place in Madrid, for example.
For these spectacles, the town magistrate ordered the streets swept
and watered.
The balconies and awnings were adorned with the best decorations
and the captives changed their clothes, washed themselves
and rested
before joining in the processions.
People of all
ages and social classes came to
watch the captives
and to celebrate in these events.
What's also interesting, though, is how the materials
of captivity also form part
perhaps in some of these processions. Here we can
see the slaves carrying some of their chains,
representing their experience as captives.
Other accounts talk about the bread,
the pan moreno or
darker
integral bread that was carried
at the front of the procession on a stick.
So thinking about how these captives
visually presented themselves
and understanding this as kind of a performance where the
materials of captivity served as a type of prop,
representing their experience and speaking to their encounters
that took place.
This is interesting.
returning back.
to the example, the case study
from El Amante Liberal, because.
when the captives return
back to Sicily at the end, Ricardo, the other.
main protagonist
puts on a type of spectacle or celebration
that could
with an audience perhaps similar
to what these celebrations that actually did take place
in Madrid, among other places.
In this case, Ricardo and the
crew, they see their homeland
Ricardo richly decorates the boat with colorful
streamers and flags
which he gains the attention of all the audience in the harbor.
He takes advantage of the spectators
and he decides to have
Leonisa get dressed
back into this North African costume.
That's to say, to visually
present
herself with the materials of captivity
in this North African
dress before she
arrives to the audience.
And the audience, of course
is curious
to listen quietly to their
story and to watch the
elegantly dressed characters come off the
boat.
Ricardo lifts up her half of the veil at just the
right moment to heighten this performative
moment of bringing these materials
back.
With the North African dress
as an active participant in the performance, the.
captives,
we see
that
her dress
and the
particular role
that it plays in mediating Mediterranean cultures and
subjectivities.
If we look back to the genesis of her dress,
it begins with the Jewish merchant who
first dresses
her in it, and appears numerous times until finally
at the end of the plot, she
appears in this dress and these materials brought back
from the Muslim Mediterranean.
What I
want to conclude by thinking about is the mobility
of these different cloths and garments, including the
captives costume alongside the
circulation of slaves and merchants, and how this hints
at the regular encounters and exchanges and reuses
of materials
that make up the Leonisa's dress.
Even though
her dress is described as North African, it
first appears.
in the possession of this Jewish merchant,
and even the very nature of
the character's trade activities
makes determining a certain point
the dress
origin seem less relevant and less important to define.
These qualifiers are descriptions lose their meaning.
They initially appear to mark
the dress, but if we pay attention to the
materiality of her dress, we see that
it's actually much more complicated and that
it exemplifies the experiences
of the captives themselves.
These porous, more porous,
subjectivities.
In fact,
as fashion designer and cultural anthropologist
Leyla
Belkaïd-Neri has shown attire in the Mediterranean port cities
such as Algiers
was constantly transforming into what she calls entangled
styles,
reflecting the ethnic mixes
of the peoples and the cultures of each
region. The migratory movements of Jews and Muslims from Spain to North
Africa initiated
by the Catholic
Kings conquest of the Iberian Peninsula
and followed later by the Morisco
expulsion at the start of the 17th century, has an influence
on the North African dress, from exiled Morisco contributions
to silk production
to Sephardic Jews manufacture of gold thread.
Leonisa's green silk dress covered in gold embroidered
braids participates
in this economy transformed by the migrations of
people, techniques and materials.
Considering if we think about the materials
of her dress, the materiality of her costume
and the movements, it points to the interwoven connected
social fabric
of the human relations that
also take place,
and the complications of trying to put
certain people in certain categories when the
just like the materiality of her dress and this objects that
form a good part of
Cervantes El Amante
Liberal, we see
how the
objects and people
Speak together to share this world.
Thank you for your time.