The Poetics of Piracy: Emulating Spain in English Literature by Barbara Fuchs (review)

Addressing the intricate subject of English literary history, Barbara Fuchs’s The Poetics of Piracy provides an original and stimulating exploration of the conflicted and often neglected relationship between early modern English and Spanish literature, highlighting how the legitimization of the former was and continues to be heavily dependent on the “absent presence” of the latter (1). By employing the insightful “figuration of translatio as piracy,” Fuchs masterfully bridges notions of national and intellectual property to demonstrate how piracy became a central textual metaphor that reimagined the appropriation of Spanish writings and the negation of their influence as an English nationalist and patriotic endeavor (7–8). Intelligently argued, the book puts this disavowal of influence under a spotlight, and seeks to historicize the ideological vectors of literary appropriation to better comprehend how it has shaped our understanding of Anglo-Spanish transnational relations not just in the early modern period, but also in our current cultural landscape. In Fuchs’s own words, her inspiring project is “an attempt to reinscribe in our cultural imaginary the Spanish legacy that has so often been reflexively erased” (12). A goal she sets of to achieve by carefully challenging nationalistic readings of English literary history, and providing a much-needed contextualized study of the production of some of the central figures of the Anglo-Spanish literary exchange, namely Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Thomas Middleton, as well as contemporary Renaissance scholars and playwrights. Furthermore, Fuchs champions a transnational approach to literary history that charts how productive appropriation of Spanish sources and models proves to be in an English context, where Spain functioned simultaneously as a treasure trove of resources and an imperial rival.

The brief, though conceptually sophisticated introduction maps out England’s fascination with Spanish culture, citing translations of literary texts and the dissemination of language manuals, while elucidating the rationale behind the erasure of Spain from English studies. A rationale that, as stated by Fuchs, is substantiated by these nations’ political and religious animosity, and the limited vision of contemporary scholarship, which occludes the study of literary transmission by focusing on an exclusionary understanding of imperial competition that glorifies conflict at the expense of deeply transnational connections (4–5). This book aims to correct this misconception by historicizing how Spanish influence is negotiated and arrives to the English stage, taking into account how the practices of translation and appropriation underscore imperial and cultural hostilities, as well as a profound and undeniable interest in Spanish sources.

Fuchs proceeds to structure her argument into five chapters, with the first, Forcible Translation, serving as a study of how linguistic appropriation, through translation and rewriting, is linked to territorial expansion, conflating humanistic, mercantile and military spheres. Tracing humanist notions of language as the companion of empire from Nebrija to Samuel Daniel, Fuchs skilfully demonstrates how linguistic and literary rivalries became an expression of imperial competition and expansion, as reflected in a broad range of texts (13). She cites examples from travel writing to military and geographical manuals, as well as defenses of poetry that champion translation, “appropriation and imitation as technologies for territorial increase” (18), which in turn function “as historical constructs deeply embedded in political and social relations” (27). As Fuchs incisively goes on to assert, “Only by situating these rhetorical strategies in their historical context…can we fully reconstruct the ideological vectors of transnational exchanges,” a methodology she thoroughly and brilliantly employs throughout her analyses (16). The well-crafted chapter proceeds to offer a fascinating reading of Edward Hoby’s Theorique and Practise of Warre (a translation from a military manual by Bernardino de Mendoza), and a critical examination of two dedicatory poems by Ben Jonson, in order to tease out the tensions of texts deeply imbedded in Anglo-Spanish rivalries, and entrenched in the problematic construction of emergent discourses on literary authority and commercial ownership.

The subsequent two chapters, Knights and Merchants and Plotting Spaniards, Spanish Plots, focus on...