VERTERE, 22 (2020). THE SPANISH GYPSY GIRL: A DRAMATIC POEM

"La gitanilla española: Poema teatral" is the first Spanish translation of George Eliot's (1819-1880) work entitled: "The Spanish Gypsy: A Poem" (1878). Eliot, a leading author of the English Victorian novel, also devoted herself to narrative poetry, although she is less well known for this. The text is set in the complex reality of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century, prior to the Capitulations of Santa Fe and the capture of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs, and thus reconstructs the end of the Spanish Middle Ages. The book describes the complex relationships between the Gypsy, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities, as well as with converts. The 19th-century writer Mary Ann Evans, known by the pseudonym George Eliot, as already mentioned, had a great fascination with Spanish culture and, in particular, with the Gypsy ethnic group, as bearers of transcultural ancestral values. This free verse poem is both a reading and a tribute by an English writer to Hispanic medieval romances and the Golden Age of Spanish-language literature, with special emphasis on the inspiration of Miguel Cervantes' "Exemplary Novels."