• Session 247 — ABSTRACT

    Real and Imagined Genealogies in Alfonso X’s Estoria de España

    Nitzaira Delgado-García
    PhD Candidate
    Medieval Spanish Literature
    University of California, Los Angeles
    [email protected]

    A 15th century manuscript in the National Library of Madrid (MS 7583), one of many over the preceding century containing versions of Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espanna, is unique in including an interpolated variant of the pan-European love story of Flores y Blancaflor.  This interpolation creates a new bloodline for the Emperor Charlemagne: he and his line are now of mixed Moorish and Christian ancestry.  I explore how MS 7583 modified not just bloodlines but lines of manuscript transmission and the several intriguing ways in which the compiler of this manuscript seeks to authorize his interpolation of forbidden romance into history through a —probably fanciful—“Estoria de los reyes moros que aseñorearon españa”— and its putative author “Sigiberto.”