Paper short abstract:

In the Jornada de África, Jerónymo de Mendonça marshals a vast quantity of dead bodies as evidence of the truthfulness of his historiographical project. The overwhelming presence of these bodies circumvents his history and leaves him with a futile project of textual burial.

Paper long abstract:

Of all the elements within Jerónimo de Mendonça's Jornada de África (1607) that capture the reader's attention, perhaps none does so with such force as the immense quantity of dead bodies that Mendonça seeks to marshal for his historiographical project. This historiographical strategy, however, carries profound implications for Mendonça's broader project of Portuguese history writing during the Iberian union. I argue that both the sheer number and persistent materiality of corpses within the Jornada de África, the perished soldiers, nobles, and kings of the Battle of al-Qasr al-Kabir (1578), overwhelm what is meant to be a relatively straightforward, pro-Portuguese narration of events. I focus on the recollected materiality of the corpses of Mendonça's deceased companions. I argue that the piles of corpses, insistently evoked as present within Mendonça's text through various forms of deictic reference, command (or interrupt) Mendonça's attention and attest to the failure—at several levels—of the Portuguese imperial incursion into North Africa. After the battle, the pull of the unburied corpses remains so strong for Mendonça that the temporal and geographical distance between the act of narration and the battle itself ultimately collapses. Put another way, since the Portuguese defeat and the passage of twenty-nine years between the battle and the publication of Mendonça's account preclude the possibility of any sort of care for these bodies left to rot on a North African battlefield, Mendonça ultimately offers his fallen companions a textual burial.