Elvira Roca Barea

María Elvira Roca Barea is a Spanish historian and philologist, specialized in the literature of the middle ages and early modern Europe.

Born in El Borge, Málaga, in 1966, she got her PhD in Medieval Literature. She has worked for the Spanish National Research Council -CSIC, and worked for some time in United Estates- Harvard University -during which she got interested in the Spanish Black Legend. She is the author of several scholarly publications regarding, mainly, rhetoric and the construction of images and discourses through theatre and literature.[1][2]

Empire-phobia and distortion of facts

Her most recent publication, a peer-reviewed book: "Imperofobia y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos y el Imperio Español" (Empire-phobia and Black Legends: Rome, Russia, United States and the Spanish Empire) has become a best seller. Roca Barea coins the term Empire-phobia to refer to a characteristic, repetitive process of demonization through distortion and magnification of three elements that all multi-cultural empires suffer by neighbouring nations, given certain circumstances, and that follows a consistent pattern. She claims that the Spanish Black Legend isn´t a unique phenomenon, but a particularly persistent case of this broader phenomenon, which also affected other empires like ancient Rome and Ottoman Turkey, and is now affecting modern United States, especially in the Islamic world.

In her book she offers a definition of both Empire and "black legends". Then she shows the common elements of this discourse across nations and times, and their shared strategies of construction by deconstructing its elements and showing the similarities between the anti-American, anti-Russian, anti-Roman and anti-Spanish propaganda produced by their respective contemporaries, as well as the similarities in how the empires responded-or rather, didn´t respond.[3] This book has seen 18 edditions in Spanish but has still to be translated to English.

Criticism

Historian Miguel Martínez, from the University of Chicago, has criticized Elvira Roca's Imperiofobia for its many factual errors, pseudohistorical arguments and strong ideological bias. Martínez argues that Roca systematically omits relevant data contradicting her vision of the Spanish Empire as lenient and without conflict. Resistance against the Spanish Empire in the Americas was ubiquituous and lasting (such as the Pueblo Revolt) and the atrocities committed by the conquistadors are well attested in a variety of sources, not only Bartolomé de las Casas (the main target of her criticisms).

Publications

  • A. Alberte González, M. E Roca Barea. "Edición de artes predicatorias latinas medievales". La filología latina hoy: Actualización y perspectivas, Vol. 1, 1999, ISBN 84-930825-1-1, págs. 591-597
  • M.E Roca Barea: La influencia de Cicerón y Quintiliano en las ideas sobre el estilo en las cartas de Plinio el Joven. Quintiliano, historia y actualidad de la retórica : actas del Congreso Quintiliano : historia y actualidad de la retórica : XIX Centenario de la "Institutio Oratoria" / coord. por Tomás Albaladejo, José Antonio Caballero López, Emilio del Río Sanz, Vol. 2, 1998, ISBN 84-89362-39-4, págs. 1053-1058
  • A. Alberte González, M. E Roca Barea. El estudio de las artes predicatorias "status quaestionis". Retórica y texto : [III Encuentro Interdisciplinar sobre Retórica, Texto y Comunicaciones] / coord. por Antonio Ruiz Castellanos, Antonia Víñez Sánchez, Juan Sáez Durán, 1998, ISBN 84-7786-295-8, págs. 15-19
  • M.E Roca Barea. Teatro y predicación: la predicación como espectáculo en el bajo medievo y el Renacimiento. En torno al teatro del Siglo de Oro : actas de las jornadas XII-XIII celebradas en Almería / coord. por José Juan Berbel Rodríguez, 1996, ISBN 84-8108-115-9, págs. 235-244
  • MER Barea El “Libro de la Guerra” y la traducción de Vegecio por Fray Alfonso de San Cristóbal - Anuario de estudios medievales, 2007 - estudiosmedievales.revistas.csic.es
  • MER Barea -Diego Guillén de Ávila, autor y traductor del siglo XV- Revista de filología española, 2006
  • MER Barea Las novelas de Caballería en Oriente y Occidente: aventura y magia en Chrétien de Troyes y El Caballero de la piel de leopardo- Exemplaria: Revista de literatura comparada, 2000 - dialnet.unirioja.es
  • MER Barea Imperiofobia y leyenda negra- editorial Siruela-Madrid, 2016

References

  1. ↑ Empire Phobia and Black Legend. (n.d.).
  2. ↑ Elvira Roca Barea: "Es un milagro que España siga existiendo". (n.d.).
  3. ↑ MER Barea Imperiofobia y leyenda negra- editorial Siruela-Madrid, 2016
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