Overview

A play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.

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9781836245476

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Reviews

‘All in all, The Valiant Black Man in Flanders is an excellent edition, with an insightful analysis that not only pays attention to editing and translating a seventeenth-century Spanish play, which it does effectively, but also strives successfully to provide an extensive study that is aware of the importance of performability, cultural context and the evolution of perspective through time.’ Elena Truan, Bulletin of Spanish Studies ‘With its scholarly approach and excellent Spanish texts and translations, this is a magnificent cultural resource for professors, researchers, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and students of theater. Actors, too, on both sides of the Atlantic will find in this book a most welcome addition to their repertoire.’ Mary-Anne Vetterling, Hispania

‘All in all, The Valiant Black Man in Flanders is an excellent edition, with an insightful analysis that not only pays attention to editing and translating a seventeenth-century Spanish play, which it does effectively, but also strives successfully to provide an extensive study that is aware of the importance of performability, cultural context and the evolution of perspective through time.’ Elena Truan, Bulletin of Spanish Studies

Author Information

Baltasar Fra-Molinero is Professor of Hispanic and Latin American Studies at Bates College. Nelson López is an independent researcher. Manuel Olmedo Gobante is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Arkansas.

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