Tag Archives: Portugal

Postgraduate student interviews: Erin McCombe (PhD) 

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This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2024-2025 

In the 21st century, postcolonial literature has progressively shifted from the cultural periphery to the mainstream. It offers a path to understanding the ever-present effect of colonialism within contemporary society, in particular by giving a voice to those who were historically silenced. On the 21st of March 2025, I discussed this topic with Erin McCombe, a Spanish and Portuguese PhD student whose thesis examines the topic of conviviality within literature by women of African descent in Spain and Portugal [1]. 

When did you first develop an interest in postcolonial literature? 

I suppose as an undergraduate, on the Portuguese side [of my degree]. I remember reading [the short story] ‘O embondeiro que sonhava pássaros’ by [Mozambican author] Mia Couto and that still sticks out in my mind as my initial contact with postcolonial literature. I then went on to study Lusophone African cinema and that developed my interest even more. In final year I started looking into postcolonial Africa within a Spanish context and come across some research on authors from Equatorial Guinea.  

Erin McCombe, personal archive
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On the Trail of a Shadowy Sir Lançelot: Remembering the First Atlantic Slave Voyage, from Zurara to Cervantes, 22 October 2021 – Seminar write up

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This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2021-2022.

On the 22nd of October 2021, Professor Elizabeth Wright of the University of Georgia opened the 2021-2022 Modern Languages Core Disciplinary Research Group Seminar Series with her talk entitled ‘On the Trail of a Shadowy Sir Lançelot: Remembering the First Atlantic Slave Voyage, from Zurara to Cervantes’.

Professor Wright launched into her talk by recounting Zurara’s chronicle, ‘Cronica da Guiné’ (ca. 1453), which detailed the journey of Lanzarote, a squire raised in Prince Henry’s household of the Aviz dynasty. Zurara records how this nobleman set sail from Lagos in the late spring of 1444 to the west coast of Africa with the sole purpose to enslave men and women. Zurara’s chronicle informs us that Lanzarote had been inspired by his predecessors, who had gained wealth and status after capturing and enslaving people encountered in a previous expedition. Here, Professor Wright introduced us to the relationship between the captor and the captured. The captor, Lanzarote, saw a vision of riches and prosperity upon capturing Africans, whilst the captured Africans tried to hide or flee this raid as revealed by Zurara’s chronicle. This unfair power dynamic would later be amplified in the coming history. 

The King’s Fountain (Portuguese: Chafariz d’El-Rey). Anonymous, c.1570. Public domain image.

Turning her attention to the Iberian peninsula, Professor Wright next discussed how the enslaved were dehumanized upon their arrival in Portugal. Before dividing his lot, Lanzarote proudly presented his 235 captives to the Prince, who then rewarded him with knighthood. Professor Wright noted that this was the first explicitly recorded public ritual of mass enslavement of the Atlantic slave trade, which eerily anticipated what was to come in the next 400 years. This poignant and uncomfortable spectacle even made the chronicler himself reflective. Zurara was concerned for these ‘fellow children of Adam’ who in suffering wept and prayed to their gods for rescue. Here, we sense the conflict between the economic prosperity that will result from these slave transactions and the undeniable horror that this is. 

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