Silencio de reyes negros: La Comedia Trofea de Torres Naharro y la cartografía de la colonización africana

Abstract:

This article considers how Bartolomé de Torres Naharro's Comedia Trofea (1517) represents the process of global colonization of the African and Southeast Asian coasts initiated with the Portuguese imperial expansion of the mid- to late fifteenth century. This drama, in essence, maps an emerging empire, highlighting key protagonists and places. Analysis here concentrates on the drama's parade of African kings (Monicongo, Mandinga, Capa, Milindo, Aden), considering how the representation of these rulers on stage proffers a cartography that supersedes the longstanding European conception of Africa that had remained entrenched from the influential world map of Claudius Ptolemy dating from Antiquity to the mid-fifteenth century. New place names and ethnicities evoked within the Comedia Trofea align with European imperialist projects and colonization, both justified in the drama with reference to evangelization and a Eurocentric notion of a civilizing process. This study also ponders the implications of this play's composition and performance in the context of ostentatious courtly festivities, where the aim was to elicit orientalist wonder through the representation of African kings.