El valiente negro en Flandes

by Andrés de Claramonte

98 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1638

About the author

Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy (Murcia c. 1580 – September 19, 1626) was a playwright of the Spanish Golden Age.

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rather typical comedia nueva by Andrés de Claramonte is made unusual by its content, which is explicitly antiracist and designed to argue for the valiance of Black people in general through the exploits of a soldier called Juan de Mérida as he commits various heroic deeds in the Spanish colony of Flanders. I read this in a translation by Michael Kidd, and I was especially struck by the antisodomitical abuse that Juan hurls at the page boy in the B plot. In a common plot device, a noble lady of quality decides to dress like a page boy and follow the man she loves to Flanders, but (and this is the interesting part) she also speaks very suggestively and seductively to Juan. He is not interested, however, and, instead, is very upset, consistently proposing that the young man (so he thing) should be burned alive and that he should go do what he wants to do in Italy. For some reason Kidd doesn't mention this at all in his very long literary analysis, but I am very intrigued by the word he translated as "Italy" and the word he translates as "fairy", so I'll be checking out the original Spanish.