Medieval Iberian authors adapted French crusader culture to give voice to their own reality, shaped by domestic military conflict with Islam and an obsession with the conversion of subject Muslims and Jews.

David A. Wacks is a professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon.

"David Wacks describes admirably how the complex connections and imagination of distant geography brought literary figures, tropes, and ideals into surprising contact, allowing us to see the worlds of these five literary works in new ways. Each of the chapters presents a readable and compelling view of the fictional work set in a broad social and narrative history of the crusades and crusade ideologies that drove both fictional production and real political decisions."

Jean Dangler, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Tulane University:

"David A. Wacks’s engaging and innovative book situates medieval Iberian crusade fiction in a broad Mediterranean framework, an approach that is sure to encourage further critical debate."