skeptical, thinker might have had different views on the matter” (7); that the distinction between “pure” and “political” knowledge is not an absolute and clear one and that the liberal consensus that knowledge is fundamentally apolitical “obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced” (10); that literary studies in particular have assiduously avoided discussion of the issue of political ideology shaping the structures of knowledge and have generally “avoided the effort of seriously bridging the gap between the superstructural and the base levels in textual, historical scholarship.” (13)
2. For two recent examples of collections of articles devoted to the pressing critical problems in medieval studies, see New Literary History 10 (1979) and L’esprit créateur 18 (1978) and 23 (1983).
3. Makdisi 1974 includes both his own statement about the “European awakening” and pertinent quotes from some of his predecessors (Lombard and Dawson are among the most important). For this perspective on the history of medicine specifically, see Sarton 1951, and from the point of view of the history of science in general, see Haskins 1924. Haskins 1927, the widely read and cited Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, is also revealing. Roughly the last half of the book deals with aspects of that renaissance that were explicitly Arabic-derived. In the area of the history of philosophy, few have underestimated the importance of Averroes. Even Kristeller, who is primarily concerned with the Latin tradition, makes serious concessions to the importance of the Arabic tradition: “As is well known, the Aristotelianism of the Arabs, and especially that of Averroes, exercised a powerful influence upon the Jewish thought of the later Middle Ages . . . and strongly affected the philosophy of the Christian West” (Kristeller 1961:28–29). He is nevertheless able to follow such an observation with this one: “If we want to understand the history of thought and learning in the Western Latin Middle Ages we must first of all realize that it had its foundations in Roman, not Greek, antiquity” (Kristeller 1961:29).
4. These generalizations about the attitudes among Romance medievalists are just that, generalizations, and they are hardly exempt from the enumeration of any number of exceptions. But even a cursory glance at the structures of our academic departments, the standard medieval canon, the sorts of courses that are (and are not) taught, requirements for degrees, general bibliographies, literary anthologies and literary histories, and so forth, all will confirm that as a rule such generalizations are accurate. It is curious that although there is widespread acceptance of the general endebtedness of the West to Arabic sciences and some branches of philosophy, this appears to be generally ignored when we construe the background of our literary history, although Latin-based developments in the sciences and philosophy—many of them dependent on the Arabic tradition—are almost invariably accounted for. Studies that recognize the centrality of the Arabic tradition in some other cultural sphere or its importance in terms of political history often proceed to discuss the literary problem as if those other instances of interaction were irrelevant. Thus, Bonner (1972) notes both that there was substantial interaction between Provence and al-Andalus, and between Provence and the rest of the Arab world (because of the crusades), and even that intellectual, cultural, and material developments in those areas far outstripped those of the rest of Europe. Yet, not only does he then go on to discuss these new developments in Provence as if none of this had been the case, but the map he presents for the world of the Provençal troubadours cuts off at the Pyrenees—as graphic a representation as one can imagine of how irrelevant that world seems to be. Other explicitly contradictory analyses include Frank 1955a, which details the extent to which Arabic courtly poetry and song were a fact of everyday life at the court of Alfonso II, the rallying point of both Catalan and Provençal troubadours, but then says that, nevertheless, all of this in no way influenced that poetry, apparently assuming that such influence must be expressly and directly acknowledged in the poetic texts themselves, presumably in Arabic. A comparable position is found in Rizzitano and Giunta 1967 (see further discussion in Chapter 4). Sutherland 1956, a refutation of Denomy’s work on the influence of Arabic thought on the troubadours, includes the comment that the influence was “diffuse” and thus is not to be found in the poetry—assuming, presumably, that poetic influence is not diffuse. Bezzola (1940) asserts that one cannot continue categorically to exclude the possibility of any Arabic influence on the first troubadours, and he then proceeds to do just that through his lack of any further discussion of the influence that is in fact implicit in his presentation of the historical background of William IX. In Van Cleve 1972 the chapter on the Italian lyric is presented as if no hint of Arabic culture, poetry, or song existed there, although that chapter immediately follows one on the intellectual life at the court, which he presents as completely Arabized. A distinction is made between poetry and other intellectual life that is difficult to reconcile with the unity of such traditions in virtually every other sphere of literary study, medieval or not. This split between the general historical background and literature is also reflected in the fact that while so much medieval literature elaborates or alludes to imaginary visions of the Arab world and characters—Saladin, for example—who are clearly identified as being a part of that world, relatively few of the critical discussions of these literary phenomena are concerned with either the extent to which they might reflect (and thus be understood in terms of) an influential view of that world and those people. See Paris 1895 for an early example that is not altogether outdated in its basic approach to the subject. Even studies on the French epic (so much of which is explicitly concerned with dealings with the Arab enemy) do not characteristically discuss the relationship with the Arab world as complex and problematic, nor do they regularly adopt any more sophisticated a view of the situation than that which is depicted at the surface level of the poems. (Notable exceptions to this are Galmés de Fuentes 1972 and 1978.) Even studies on Aucassin and Nicolette—a work clearly concerned with the question of dialogue, alterity, and juxtapositions and no less clearly allusive to the Arabic world conjured up by Aucassin’s name and Nicolette’s birth—can completely bypass the issue of the Arabic world in the chante-fable. See Calin 1966 for an example of the former, even in a critically sophisticated study. See Vance 1980 for a recent example of the latter.
5. The problem is perhaps best exemplified in cases where a scholar does comparative work and/or breaches the presumed demarcations of Arabic and European scholarship. One of the most noteworthy cases of this, an extreme case but far from a unique one, is certainly that of María Rosa Lida’s work on the Libro de buen amor and its Semitic antecedents (Lida 1940 and 1959). She was severely taken to task by the respected and influential Spanish historian Sánchez-Albornoz (1979:258–75). Although few other scholars are as vitriolic as he, this specific case is worth mentioning precisely because his attack on Lida’s work makes explicit those attitudes that are in other cases covert, although no less powerful, and because it reflects certain premises that are characteristic of a considerable number of scholars working in an area that is not only marginalized but, it would seem, protective of its marginalization. Lida’s work, according to Sánchez-Albornoz, is deficient because she is not an Arabist (a Spanish Arabist, it almost goes without saying) and consequently incapable a priori of sound knowledge of the Arabic and Hebrew texts she is discussing. Lida’s impeccable scholarly credentials show just how exaggerated such a territorial attitude is, since it implies that this area is so special that others not of the same school and training have no business dealing with it at all and are incapable of working on it competently. Why is an otherwise competent scholar and reader of literary texts rendered incompetent when faced with a decent edition and/or translation of an Arabic or Hebrew text written and/or circulated in Spain or Sicily in the Middle Ages? And if we are working with deficient editions or translations, which is sometimes adduced, or if we have incomplete knowledge of the historicocultural background of such texts, why is such a situation not remedied by those who in the same breath are staking this out as their territory? Such attitudes, coming as they often do from those concerned with Arabic studies, can only contribute in equal measure with the Europeanist’s attitude of neglect perpetuating the isolation of the field.
But the criticism of Lida’s work voiced by Sánchez-Albornoz goes a step further and in some measure sheds light on the nature of the other criticism he has made. He fails to comprehend her attempt to link the Hebrew (and thus Arabic) texts of medieval Spain with a Christian, truly
