Apuntes sobre el mito de los Abencerrajes y sus versiones literarias

Abstract

The legendary beheading of the Abencerrajes acquires a mythical character in Christian Granada, and the theme appears in many texts of the Golden Age. The unjust sentencing is commonly attributed to the last Nazarí monarch, this being viewed as the cause of the loss of the kingdom. The connection of the event to the Alhambra is underscored by the folkloric motif of the indelible bloodstain, which is rooted in oral tradition. Numerous Western literatures modulate and transform, in the course of three centuries, the paradigmatic figure of the Abencerraje.