Collisions, Deflections, and Conjunctions The Representations of Turks and Moors in Italian Folktales

Abstract

Collisions, Deflections, and Conjunctions: The Representations of Turks and Moors in Italian Folktales is an interdisciplinary study that focuses on the ambiguous roles Turks and Moors played in Italian cultural history and folk literature in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. The book argues that in Italian folktales, Turks and Moors function both as symbolic lapses mirroring the fears, anguishes, and the defects of the Italian society, and as anchoring points co-opted by the ruling classes to preserve the delicate equilibrium of hegemonic alliances. Combining history and literature, the study contends that Italian folktales present sites of contestation in which miscellaneous class positions and discourses vie with one another for ascendancy, and Turkish and Moorish characters enter into such struggles for power as conduits for subjugation and/or as mediators between discordant and incompatible social realities.