Representations of Gharb Al-Andalus in selected travel writing, historical fiction and journalism (1787-1989)

This study investigates how Gharb (Western) Al-Andalus is represented in a selection of texts written in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish, dating from the Romantic period, beginning in the late 1780s, up until the late twentieth century. The first chapter examines British and French travel writing up until the late nineteenth century, while the second investigates nineteenth-century historical fiction which draws on travel writing. The third chapter focuses on the early twentieth century as an age of politicisation, looking at Portuguese journalism and British travel writing, whereas the fourth moves to the late twentieth century to examine José Saramago’s travel writing and historiographical metafiction. Whereas nineteenth-century travel writing on Spain contributed to the construction of a Spanish Orient in the European consciousness, this study finds that a Portuguese Orient was only fleetingly perceived in comparative travel writing on Portugal. It was not until the 1930s that travel writing ‘caught up’ and fully embraced Portugal’s Islamic traces. In addition, this study finds that Oliveira Parreira’s Os Luso-Árabes (1898) is not only the most detailed representation of Gharb Al-Andalus in nineteenth-century historical fiction, but is also a work that draws directly on the author’s own travel writing. In different ways, José Saramago’s História do Cerco do Lisboa (1989) also draws on his earlier Viagem a Portugal (1981). Finally, the study demonstrates how the Algarvian intellectual community kept Oliveira Parreira’s legacy alive in their journalism and defended their tradition of celebrating the region’s Islamic heritage in the first half of the twentieth century