Suspending Disbelief: (Un)civil Conflict in Ginés Pérez de Hita's Guerras civiles de Granada (primera parte)

Abstract

ABSTRACT:To overcome continual disputes over Ginés Pérez de Hita's unknowable intentions, this article adopts the complicated and conflicted perspective of his broad readership in early modern Spain. This point of view understood Guerras civiles de Granada I through a horizon of expectations established by practices perceived in verisimilar historias (histories/stories) and theories gleaned from prescriptive works. To better understand these expectations, the first half of this article examines how apocryphal and authentic historias reveal frictions between early modern conceptions of the epic and historiography with respect to facticity and verisimilitude. The second half of this article considers how Guerras civiles de Granada I's entertaining verisimilitude enabled an early modern audience to suspend disbelief and contemplate how intolerant malsines perpetuated cycles of (un)civil conflict in early modern Spain by falsely accusing others of betraying the kingdom's customs, religion, and royal family.