Resumen de Found in translation: Homoerotica and unconventional Muslim masculinities in Gaspar María de Nava Álvarez’s Poesías asiáticas
The Enlightenment writer Gaspar de Nava Álvarez interrogated eighteenth-century notions of masculinity and sexuality in Poesías asiáticas (Asian Poems 1833), a reworking of Arabic and Persian verses. I argue that the homoeroticism expressed in Poesías asiáticas forges an Enlightenment-inspired masculine identity of Muslim men that deconstructs stereotypical images of lascivious and violent Islamic predators. The deployment of positive imagery of desire between Muslim men redirects Spanish Enlightenment poetry away from French influences and invokes Islamicate discursive images as a sort of new Arcadia in the Spanish collective imaginary and as a source of poetic inspiration.
