Moses Almosnino's epistles: a sixteenth-century genre of Sephardi vernacular literature

• Autores: Olga Borovaya
• Localización: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, ISSN-e 1754-6567, ISSN 1754-6559, Vol. 6, Nº. 2, 2014, págs. 251-269
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • It is commonly believed that Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) literature emerged in the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century when the Sephardi vernacular became “independent” of Castilian. Without discussing the linguistic validity of the latter claim, I will show not only that Ottoman Sephardim already had a literature of their own in the sixteenth century, but that contacts with Peninsular culture and the needs of Iberian exiles brought a new literary subgenre into existence. The Sephardi immigration to the Ottoman lands lasted through the first decades of the eighteenth century, but it had significantly waned by the early seventeenth century. While the immigration continued, Ottoman Jews had access to some of the books published in Spain. Furthermore, the ex-conversos returning to Judaism produced a short-lived audience of educated Jews who were not fluent in Hebrew. While most sixteenth-century Ladino works were translations of religious Hebrew texts, Moses Almosnino chose to write original secular works for educated men who were not proficient in Hebrew, and created his own subgenre, the vernacular scholarly epistle. In this article, I will demonstrate, by means of close reading, the connection of Almosnino's literary epistles to Iberian culture