Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature

David A. Wacks

Description

Winner, 2015 Jewish Book Awards, Sephardic Culture

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The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Diaspora Studies for Sephardic Culture
2. Allegory and Romance in Diaspora: Jacob ben Elazar's Book of Tales
3. Poetry in Diaspora: From al-Andalus to Provence and back to Castile
4. The Anxiety of Vernacularization: Shem Tov ben Isaac ibn Ardutiel de Carrión's Proverbios morales and Debate between the Pen and the Scissors
5. Diaspora as Tragicomedy: Vidal Benvenist's Efer and Dina
6. Empire and Diaspora: Solomon ibn Verga's Shevet Yehudah and Joseph Karo's Magid Meisharim
7. Reading Amadís in Constantinople: Spanish Fiction in the Key of Diaspora
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Jewish
• medieval
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Jews
• Spanish Civil War
• Jewish literature
• Jewish studies
• Spain
• History of Europe
• Spain (groupe)
• European
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253015761
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

DOUBLE DIASPORA IN SEPHARDIC LITERATURE
INDIANA SERIES IN SEPHARDI AND MIZRAHI STUDIES
Harvey E. Goldberg and Matthias Lehmann, editors
DOUBLE DIASPORA
in
SEPHARDIC LITERATURE
JEWISH CULTURAL PRODUCTION
BEFORE AND AFTER 1492

DAVID A. WACKS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone [phone]
Fax [phone]
2015 by David A. Wacks
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wacks, David A.
Double diaspora in Sephardic literature : Jewish cultural production before and after 1492 / David A. Wacks.
pages cm - (Indiana series in Sephardi and Mizrahi studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01572-3 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01576-1 (ebook) 1. Jewish literature-History and criticism. 2. Spanish literature-Jewish authors-History and criticism. 3. Sephardic authors. 4. Spanish literature-13th century-History and criticism. 5. Spanish literature-Classical period, 1500-1700-History and criticism. 6. Spanish literature-Foreign countries-History and criticism. 7. Jewish diaspora in literature. I. Title. II. Title: Jewish cultural production before and after 1492.
PN842.W33 2015
809 .88924046-dc23
2014044168
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
For Zev and Eitan
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
Introduction
1 Diaspora Studies for Sephardic Culture
2 Allegory and Romance in Diaspora: Jacob ben Elazar s Book of Tales
3 Poetry in Diaspora: From al-Andalus to Provence and Back to Castile
4 The Anxiety of Vernacularization: Shem Tov ben Isaac ibn Ardutiel de Carri n s Proverbios morales and Debate between the Pen and the Scissors
5 Diaspora as Tragicomedy: Vidal Benvenist s Efer and Dina
6 Empire and Diaspora: Solomon ibn Verga s Shevet Yehudah and Joseph Karo s Magid Meisharim
7 Reading Amad s in Constantinople: Spanish Fiction in the Key of Diaspora
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First I would like to thank the Department of Romance Languages and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon for their ongoing support over the past ten years and, in particular, the efficient, hardworking, and ever-professional departmental administrators, Herlinda Leon, Kerry Schlicht, and Zach Lazar.
Support from various sources enabled me to bring the project to completion. I received a Harry Starr Fellowship in Judaica from the Harvard Center for Jewish Studies (2006), a Summer Research Award from the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oregon (2010), and the Ernest G. Moll Fellowship in Literary Studies, Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon (2010). In addition, AHA International in Oviedo, Spain, provided administrative support and office space during spring semester 2013. I spent much of spring 2013 working at the offices of AHA International Oviedo, the library of the University of Oviedo, and especially Cafeter a-Restaurante Flandes, where you can get the best tortilla espa ola in town. Large portions of this book were researched and written while I listened to the channel Drone Zone on somafm.com , a nonprofit, listener-supported, commercial-free internet radio station.
I had the opportunity to present preliminary versions of a number of chapters at professional meetings, including the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Modern Language Association, the Midwest Medieval Association, the Mediterranean Seminar (UC Multi-Campus Research Project), and in invited talks at the following institutions: the Center for Medieval Literature at the University of Southern Denmark, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Notre Dame, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado, the Department of French, Italian, and Hispanic Studies at the University of British Columbia, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University, Consejo Superior de Investigaci n Cient fica (CSIC), and the University of Toronto.
Preliminary versions of a number of chapters have appeared in print. Material from chapter 3 appeared in Vernacular Anxiety and the Semitic Imaginary: Shem Tov Isaac Ibn Ardutiel de Carri n and His Critics ( Journal of Medieval Iberian Cultural Studies 4.2: 2012, 167-184). Sections of chapter 5 appear in Vidal Benvenist s Efer ve-Dinah between Hebrew and Romance (in A Sea of Languages: Literature and Culture in the Pre-modern Mediterranean , ed. Suzanne Akbari and Karla Mallette, 217-231, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). Sections of chapter 7 are included in a chapter in an edited volume: Reading Amad s in Constantinople: Imperial Spanish Fiction in the Key of Diaspora (in In and Of the Mediterranean: Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Studies , edited by N ria Silleras-Fern ndez and Michelle Hamilton, Memphis: Vanderbilt University Press, forthcoming). Some material from chapter 7 is also included in Translation in Diaspora: Sephardic Spanish-Hebrew Translations in the Sixteenth Century (in A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula , ed. C sar Dom nguez and Mar a Jos Vega, vol. 2, Amsterdam: Benjamins, forthcoming).
During the time I worked on this book I was invited to a number of venues to speak about preliminary versions of several chapters. My thanks go to the UC Irvine Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Duke University Department of Romance Studies, the Consejo Superior de Investigaci n Cient fica, Princeton University s Department of Spanish, the Vancouver School of Theology, Cornell University s Department of Romance Studies, Stanford University s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the University of British Columbia s Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Colorado University s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Notre Dame University s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Southern Denmark University s Center for Medieval Literature, NYU Abu Dhabi, and UC Berkeley s Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Very special thanks go to the UC Multi-Campus Research Project in Mediterranean Studies/the Mediterranean Seminar, whose quarterly meetings served as workshop and incubator and whose members provided ample intellectual and moral support. Many individual colleagues helped me complete this project, by discussing, reading, commenting, and collaborating in a number of ways. My most heartfelt thanks are due to Suzanne Akbari, Barbara Altmann, Sam Armistead, Judith Baskin, Lars Boje Mortensen, Shamma Boyarin, Olga Davidson, Daniela Flesler, Leonardo Garc a-Pab n, Amalia Gladhart, Margaret Greer, Elise Hansen, Matti Huss, Avi Matalon, A da Oceransky, Regina Psaki, Kate Regan, ngel S enz-Badillos, Judit Targarona Borr s, Khachig T l lyan, Janie Zackin, and the anonymous reviewers from Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies .
Finally, I would like to thank my partner Katharine Gallagher for her support, advice, insight, and so much more.
A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS, TRANSLITERATIONS, AND BIBLICAL CITATIONS
Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. For transliterations of Hebrew and Arabic words I use modified versions of the systems used by Jewish Quarterly Review and Journal of Arabic Literature . In both languages the letter ayin is indicated by the character -, while Hebrew alef and Arabic hamza are indicated by a single apostrophe. In some cases I have opted for conventional transliterations of proper names and nouns that are more commonly known in Anglophonia (i.e., Abbasid vs. Abbasid or Abdallah vs. Abd-Allah). When a Hebrew poet has cited a biblical text directly, I indicate the citation in italics and reference the citation in a footnote.
DOUBLE DIASPORA IN SEPHARDIC LITERATURE
Introduction
Jews in Christian Iberia in the medieval and early modern periods considered themselves to be living in diaspora, descendants of those Hebrews who were exiled from Judea and Samaria, first by the Babylonians and subsequently by the Romans. Their religious and literary culture expressed a diasporic consciousness. As Spaniards they shared many of the aesthetic and cultural values of their Christian neighbors, and as medieval Jews they understood their own history along prophetic lines: they were chosen to suffer the pain of exile, to keep God s law until the arrival of the Messiah. Sephardic poets such as Judah Halevi wrote passionately of returning to Zion, but at the same time these poets were also natives of the Iberian Peninsula, speakers of Spanish and other Romance dialects, and aficionados of local troubadour poetry, knightly romances, folktales and ballads. 1
In 1492, when the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella gave their Jewish subjects the choice between conversion to Catholicis