Dangerous liaisons: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Renaissance Italian novella

This dissertation examines the depiction of inter-religious and inter-racial relations in several fifteenth and sixteenth century novellas. When Christians come into intimate contact with Jews or Muslims in these tales, the encounter is invariably problematic. My study examines the perceived 'problem' of these liaisons, the social anxieties this 'problem' reveals, and the cultural fantasies deployed to resolve it in these narratives.;In the first chapter, I discuss four late-fifteenth century tales of sexual relations between Christian mistresses and their Moorish slaves by Salernitano and Cornazano. Chapter Two considers the 'epic romance' between a Tunisian noblewoman and a Florentine youth as narrated by Firenzuola in 1525. In Chapter Three I examine the representation of relations between Christians and Jews in two mid-sixteenth century narratives by Fortini. The final chapter analyzes the consequences of marriage between Christian women and Muslim men in two late sixteenth century novellas, by Giraldi and Bandello, respectively.;My examination of these tales considers popular notions about categories of difference, historical contexts, literary precedents, and the continuities and discontinuities between representations of Jews and representations of Muslims. Clearly framed by a Christian and European ideology, and mirroring a number of traditional popular stereotypes about non-Christian identities, these texts also represent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim figures in ways that destabilize and subvert apparently monolithic notions of self and 'other.' I argue that the notions of Muslim and Jewish identity reflected in these tales point to preoccupations about Christian identity. I further find that what seems to determine how inter-religious and inter-racial sexual relations will be judged is not the perceived social, racial, religious, and/or cultural affiliation of each figure. In the end, the tales indicate that gender may trump all other categories of difference. Finally, I suggest that these narratives reveal a more acute anxiety about male Muslim sexuality than male Jewish sexuality, reflecting the contrasting Christian attitudes toward Islam and Judaism and the threats these were seen to pose to the Christian world.