Maria Antonia Garces. Cervantes in Algiers: a Captive's Tale.

Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. xviii + 349 pp. index, illus. bibl. $39.95. ISBN: 0-8265-1406-5.

Taking as a point of departure the notion that captivity marks the life of Cervantes, and that the trauma of the experience, not easily available to consciousness, poignantly haunts the author's texts, Maria Antonia Garces provides new and fascinating interpretations of Cervantes' texts and provides useful materials dealing with Cervantes' captivity in Algiers (1575-80). Garces' book is grounded on the link between trauma and creativity: "trauma in Cervantes functions as a fountain of creation; the reenactment of the traumatic experience in the writer's works generally produces an outburst of fantasy, an escape into another reality that circumvents the traumatic event itself, even while functioning as an artistic testimony to trauma" (5). The book is divided into five chapters. While the first two focus on the history of the Barbary Coast and on Cervantes' years of captivity, the last three turn to his writings. Here we are treated to suggestive interpretations of a number of texts, from pastoral and byzantine romances to interpolated tales and dramatic works.

In the early chapters Garces delves deeply into the relation between Cervantes and Antonio de Sosa, the most authoritative witness in the Informacion de Argel, a collection of testimonies on Cervantes' behavior in Algiers. Taking as a point of departure her own discoveries at the Archives of Malta showing that Sosa was linked to the Order of St. John, an organization of Christian corsairs, Garces follows his career and its impact on Cervantes. She discovers that both were interested in literary matters and that literary discussions and communication between renegades and captives were common. Indeed, the Algerian captives enjoyed a relative freedom. And since Sosa was held captive by a Jewish renegade, Garces attempts to recapture the plight of the Jews in Algiers. There are fascinating glimpses here of the friendship between Cervantes and the Sicilian humanist Antonio Veneziano; of Cervantes' possible discussions in the Tuscan language with Hasan Veneciano; and of his possible friendship with the poet and Moroccan ruler Abd al-Malik. Given Maria Antonia Garces' careful and sensitive readings of Algerian cultures, it comes as a surprise that she dismisses the possible erotic interplay between Cervantes and Hasan Veneciano. Sosa, who attempted to erase the accusations leveled against Cervantes by Juan Blanco de Paz, is chosen by Garces as her chief witness. Citing him, she concludes that: "Coming from the most severe critic of sexual diversity among the Turks, this declaration on behalf of Cervantes constitutes a categorical statement. No more needs to be said on the subject" (115). But what are we to say about the proliferation of garzones in Cervantes' works as documented by Adrienne Martin? Or, about Percas de Ponseti's interpretation of the Durandarte/Belerma episode in Don Quijote 2 as a replay of the relations between Hasan Veneciano and Cervantes?

The last three chapters contain many insightful readings of works where Cervantes treats the subject of captivity. Chapter 3 focuses on Cervantes' play El trato de Argel and also includes his later play, Los banos de Argel. Garces studies these works from the point of view of the therapeutic effect of writing. She analyzes how issues of biography and history are not simply represented or reflected, but are reinscribed and reelaborated in Cervantes' dramas. Garces stresses the innovative nature of these works. Cervantes "would be, in effect, the first to stage in sixteenth-century Spain the ordeals of Barbary captives" (125). A particularly fascinating section of this chapter deals with the lingua franca or speech of Barbary. This mixture of languages points to the hybrid frontier world of Muslims and Christians. And, of course, Garces discusses the fragmented and the hybrid in Cervantes. Chapter 4 focuses on the border between life and work, between history and legend, as Garces follows the vagaries of the name Saavedra in Cervantes' works. Noting that in the "Captive's Tale" this name appears immediately before the image of Zoraida, Garces interrogates the boundaries between traumatic memories and fantastic inventions. For Garces, Zoraida is both a creature of the border and an evocation of Mary, Queen of the (Christian) heaven. In this context, it would be interesting to discover Garces' response to those that view Zoraida as a new Isis.

Maria Antonia Garces' last chapter turns to the very moment of capture. She begins with a scene in La Galatea, bk. 5, where, in the midst of a narrative of capture the point of view shifts from a third-person narrator to the first person. She ends the chapter with the Persiles following the thread of Cervantes' life and f<ADD></ADD>iction. The commingling of history, biography, and trauma studies and, most importantly, the vivid narrative of an Algiers that Cervantes constantly recalls, make of this an exciting and fascinating read. This is an important book that provides new and compelling insights into Cervantes' Algiers.

FREDERICK A. DE ARMAS

University of Chicago