Since the circulation of Brevìsima Relacin de la Destruccin de las ndias by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Black Legend (Leyenda Negra), the recurrent image of the Spanish Empire as an absolutist political entity due to its criminal operations against the populations of the New World, came to underpin all projections of Spain to the outside world. In the light of the imperial rivalry between Spain and Britain, there was limited space for mutual sympathy and an abundance of texts that sought to denigrate Spain as a despotic, brutal imperial power. In their endeavour to differentiate themselves from the supposed darkness of Catholic Spain, British and American travel writers formed a travel canon that reproduced images of Otherness, deconstructing every cultural aspect, when confronted with the Spanish landscape and society.This volume pertains to the depictions of Spanish society and the Spaniards in ten Western travelogues which follow the country's steps of transformation from a European superpower into a fallen kingdom struggling to reconstruct its identity after the Disaster of 1898 and the subsequent loss of its leading colonising status.
Dimitrios Kassis holds a PhD from the Faculty of English Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His doctoral thesis was entitled Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature, published in 2015. He has received a Master's degree in Education Studies (with Distinction) from Roehampton University in London, UK. In addition, he holds a Master's degree in Translation Studies from the Department of French Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He speaks 24 foreign languages and his academic interests are connected with travel literature, translation and language studies. He has published eleven monographs: Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature, American Travellers in Scandinavia, Icelandic Utopia in Victorian Travel Literature, Greek Dystopia in British Women Travellers' Discourse, Images of Irishness in Nineteenth-Century Travel Literature, Perceptions of Germany in British Travel Literature, Deconstructions of the Russian Empire in Western Travel Literature, A Balkan Tour: Dystopian Depictions of Serbia in British Travel Literature, Glimpses of the Bulgarian Other in British Travel Literature, A Highland Tour of Victorian Travel Writing: Ten Voices on Scotland and Romania Redefined in British Travel Texts. He is currently working as an English teacher in the public sector.
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