Robert Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid: Spain as a Textual Archive and an Intervention Zone

Abstract

Far from being a mere medievalizing work meant to provide light entertainment,
Robert Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid (1808) was the first translation of a fundamental component of Europe’s revered epic heritage and a complex work of scholarship. Through a careful exploration of this often overlooked masterpiece, this essay demonstrates how the author organized it as a multilayered textual machine aimed at an intricate operation of cultural construction. To this end, the essay offers a detailed examination of the
origins and compositional development of the Chronicle, an analysis of its translational mechanisms and an assessment of its contribution to a wide-ranging process of «cultural translation» of Spain and its civilization into nineteenth-century British culture. In this perspective, the Chronicle becomes visible as an instrument of intervention into Spain and Iberian culture, into Romantic-period scholarly discourse and practice, as well as into the ideological debate on the Peninsular War. Through his composite text, Southey pieced together a multifaceted vision of Spain that translated into a cosmic vision of Europe and the West, as well as of world history and civilization. Finally, the impact of this work on later poets, historians and intellectuals testifies to the long-lasting relevance of its narrative of Spain for the imagination of nineteenth-century Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world.