Murder in the Mediterranean: the crime scenes behind The Changeling

Abstract

In this paper I want to revisit the Spanish locations of The Changeling and reconsider the relation between the play and its English source, Reynolds’ The triumphs of God’s revenge, as if both works were echoing a true crime story based on actual events that may have happened in the Mediterranean coast shortly before or at the time of Reynolds’ sojourn in Spain as a merchant and trade dealer. In so doing I would like to observe the adaptability of the murder mystery genre in the different cultures and its dependence on authentic stories recorded as real events at the time. In the appropriation and different transformations of the actual events I follow the linear progression from one text or set of events to their adaptation, both culturally and generically. Moving backwards from The Changeling to God’s Revenge Against Murder to the crimes in the coast of Alicante and Valencia compiled in the chronicles and diaries of the time, where comparable events were recorded, I intend to explore how these stories circulated, reshaped and adapted as part of the process of cultural transmission between the Mediterranean and the British Isles.