A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Elizabeth Spragins (review)

Reviewed by: A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology in the Early Modern Mediterranean by Elizabeth Spragins Mary-Anne Vetterling Spragins, Elizabeth. A Grammar of the Corpse: Necroepistemology in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Fordham UP, 2023. Pp. 222. ISBN 978-1-5315-0157-0. Professor Spragins draws on a dazzling array of historical, literary, theoretical, semiotic, and linguistic studies, articles and books on death, plus documents in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, to uncover new significance and illuminate accounts of the Battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr (Battle of the Three Kings) (1578) in Morocco. A Grammar of the Corpse employs a sophisticated and specialized vocabulary to accompany Spragins's penetrating and detailed analysis. This delightfully erudite book contains an introduction, five chapters, an epilogue, copious end-notes, a detailed bibliography, and an index. The approach is global and transnational, rooted in the context of Mediterranean Studies. The Introduction opens with Spragins's cadaver-centered account about the deaths of three kings (Sebastian of Portugal and both ʿAbd al-Malik and al-Mutawakkil of Morocco) on a battlefield, strewn with countless dead Moroccan, Portuguese, Spanish and mercenary soldiers (plus eyewitnesses of the events). The importance of this battle is established through an overview of the events leading up to Sebastian's invasion in Morocco—with a view to expand the Portuguese Empire—and the political turmoil among Moroccan royalty, plus a description of how the aftermath of the battle brought peace to Morocco but chaos in Portugal, eventually leading to its government's takeover by Spain (1580–1640). Chapter 1 discusses Jerónimo de Mendonça's detailed eyewitness account of the dead and dying at the Battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr in his Jornada de África (1607). Spragins specifies that Mendonça's version of the battle was written to counteract preceding versions (especially that of the Genoese Girólamo de Conestaggio) whose accounts of the Portuguese defeat had been overwhelmingly negative. She adds that the detailed first-hand colonial accounts of the New World, along with a Renaissance culture fascinated by human anatomy, helped privilege Mendonça's own eyewitness account as more reliable than that of the others. She examines several brief passages from his book that describe and name the dead on the battlefield. Chapter 2 provides a microscopic examination of Mendonça's account in Jornada de África of the death of King Sebastian of Portugal contrasted with that by Dr. Joseph Valencia's letter (c.1578–79) describing the death of King ʿAbd al-Malik. Spragins explains how Mendonça's avoidance of mentioning the actual death of his king was dictated by social customs. On the other hand, Valencia's account not only reveals the exact way in which his king dies but also how he hid the fact of his death to make sure that the royal successor had been securely established on the throne by the time the bad news was divulged. In chapter 3 Spragins focuses on Miguel Leitão de Andrade's Miscellânea (1629), in which the author provides an eyewitness account of the Battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr. Only this time the account is from the vantage point of a Portuguese soldier injured in that battle and subsequently a prisoner of the enemy, from whence he is able to view his fellow victims, including his deceased king. Spragins skillfully links Leitão's verbal description of the corpses with the visual representation (reproduced in her book) of two martyrs (complete with wounds) on the frontispiece of his volume. Another description of King Sebastian's corpse, from the letters (1578–79) of Juan de Silva, the Spanish ambassador to Portugal, is an eyewitness account from a different vantage point at the Battle of al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr, and serves as the focus of chapter 4. Spragins establishes the importance of Silva's relationship with the King of Spain through an examination of the letters he had written to Felipe II while he was his ambassador to Portugal. Later Silva joins his friend King Sebastian in the latter's ill-fated journey to Morocco and is injured in the battle...