El ferí de Benastepar, o los moros de Sierra Bermeja

Abstract

Combining a rich depiction of historical customs with genuine admiration for the Muslim legacy of Andalucia, El ferí de Benastepar is a previously unknown novel by Spanish writer José Miguel Hué y Camacho (1803-1841) that relates the doomed romance between Castilian lady Elvira de Castro and the eponymous ferí de Benastepar, Abenamet, a morisco chief.This book provides an annotated edition of El ferí de Benastepar, based on the two surviving manuscripts of the novel. The introduction provides an up-to-date biographical and critical assessment of Hué y Camacho and contextualises El ferí de Benastepar both as a product of Romantic orientalism - a 'local' orientalism directed by Andalusian writers towards the past of their own lands - and as part of the Romantic revival of the early modern 'Moorish novel' that took place in the first half of the nineteenth century, both in Spain and abroad. Notes provide clarification on lexical issues well as on the medieval and early modern sources of the novel.