Discontinuities in the Vision of Islam Between Medieval France and Castile

The following article examines the differing perspectives and understandings of Islam held by two related texts, each representing specific layers of French and Castilian societies in the times of Crusades. A careful and detailed comparison of the twelfth century French epic Les Chétifs and its late thirteenth-century Castilian version reveals significant interpolations and glosses that upset the notion of a faithful medieval translation. The textual variations here identified and discussed highlight problematic differences in the understanding of certain aspects of Islamic worship and theology from the perspective of late medieval French and Castilian texts, making clear that the alleged common enemy of both Christian societies is not identical. After a thorough social context of the production of the Castillian manuscript, this paper approaches this problem with a word-for-word comparison of certain excerpts from both texts, and then proceeds to interpret their differences within the literary and historical background of production. This paper is strongly inclined towards the study of the Hispanic text, as it focuses on the variations found in the unedited and oldest copy of the Castilian version. However, these variations are examined before a scrupulous reading of the French text and are solely dedicated to Islamic references.