The Epic of Juan Latino. Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain by Elizabeth R. Wright

Reviewed by: The Epic of Juan Latino. Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain by Elizabeth R. Wright John J. Allen Elizabeth R. Wright, The Epic of Juan Latino. Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain. No. 22 in the Toronto Iberic series. U of Toronto P, 2016. 288 pp. The extensive list of helpers, interpreters, contacts, and sources involved in Wright's impressive acknowledgments prepares us for the unusual thoroughness of the study she has produced. The book opens with "A Lost Portrait and a Forgotten Name," introducing us to the free black Christian poet Juan Latino, about whom very little is actually known. The picture on the book jacket is not our subject, but Durer's "Portrait Study of a Black Man," and we do not know when or how Latino was freed, or anything about his ancestry or birth date. We do learn that he managed to buy a home, hire servants, and invest a significant amount of money, all of which was made possible by the third Duke of Sessa, who provided for his education. The first duke of Sessa was the "gran capitán," Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba; Latino was the duke's grandson's slave. The study is organized in two Parts, one of biographical analysis and elucidation of the historical background for the creation of his epic, in two chapters, followed by analysis of the poem, in chapters 3, 4, and 5. The outlines of his life story move in Chapter 1 from Latin lessons in the company of the duke's grandson to a look at the Sessa family and the process of Latino's assimilation. Chapter 2 brings a detailed account of the effects of and response to the edicts of intolerance promulgated at the beginning of 1567. The war and the arrival of John of Austria bring rebellion, which is met by savage repression and leads to the intensification of the slave trade. Part II, "The Epic of Lepanto," plays out in three chapters, opening with the account of the battle that reached Latino and his contemporaries and the reaction to it in Spain. Wright teases out the possible implications of the poet's decision to write his poem in Latin as they relate to the emperor and his imperial ambitions as well as to his own peculiar status as a black man. His prefatory poem, "On the Birth of Untroubled Times," speaks specifically to these issues, warning of the adverse implications of racism for the eastern expansion of empire. For Wright, the recent translation of the poem into English is "propitious for delving into this early and eloquent statement of pride from a diasporic African based in Europe" (97). Chapter 4, "Christians and Muslims on the Battle Lines," views the historic battle from the point of view of post-rebellion Granada, where his patron, Pedro de Deza, held sway. Wright perceptively examines and weighs the complex of factors influencing the encomium with which Latino introduces his poem: shifting the focus from Deza to himself, and the patronage quest from Deza to Philip II; replacing the Classical deities invoked in the epic tradition with those of the Christian formulary along the way and moving from pagan Olympus to the baptismal font. Citations from Virgil's Aeneid link Ottoman Turks with ancient Trojans. [End Page 544] Wright highlights the interposition of the "Moorish rower, captured and bound in chains," original, she says, among the many other accounts of that historic encounter, and she recognizes references to Lucan's view of war in his Pharsalia. "The Costs of Modern Warfare" closes the consideration of the text with consideration of the tension that Wright finds in the poem between "historical documentation and epic artistry." She compares Latino's close-up view of the battle with Francisco de Herrera's panoramic perspective, and contrasts Herrera's individualized noble protagonists with the "nameless foot soldiers" of Latino. One key divergence from other Lepanto epics, Wright finds, is the plight of Ali Pasha's bereft sons, pointing out that their lamentation is the longest speech in the poem. Latino's account of Lepanto as "an epochal naval victory undercut by some tactical...

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