Il ruolo dei ‘saraceni’ nel consolidamento di un senso della nazione nell’Inghilterra del XIV secolo - Articolo invitato

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to illuminate an often ignored aspect whenever one talks about the factors contributing to the strengthening of a sense of nation in England in the period following the Norman conquest, namely the role played by the mythical figure of the ‘saracen’. This is a cultural fabrication denoting the Muslim (but bearing very little or no resemblance with the real historical one) which is present in a great variety of texts, particularly in Middle English romances. The article intends to contribute to an academic project of a ‘postcolonial’ kind which only recently got underway: to ascertain the role played by Islam and the Islamic world in European and global history, exposing what official, Eurocentric historiography (and on its trail literary criticism) had usually withheld or elided, deconstructing its truisms, unmasking myths and stereotypes, and decentring its narrative.