The Quest for El Cid (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Fletcher
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Historical biography
- Time of Work: The eleventh century
- Setting: Spain
- Principal Characters: Rodrigo Diaz, Sancho II, Alfonso VI, Berenguer Ramon, Yusuf irn Tashufin
- Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History, Biography
- Subjects: Culture, Exile or expatriates, Muslims, Aristocracy or aristocrats, Military life or service, Heroes or heroism, Soldiers, Spain or Spanish people
- Locales: Spain
Like Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror (1978), this biography is essentially the history of an era with the heroic career of an interesting and important individual thrust into the foreground to establish continuity and context. Like Tuchman, Richard Fletcher believes in the utility and propriety of popular history written with beauty and distinction. Fletcher also resembles Tuchman in that he is not afraid to take on the academic establishment—in this case, the school of Spanish patriotic history as personified by Ramon Menendez Pidal, whose 1929 book, La Espana del...
[The entire page is 1417 words long]
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