Vernacular anxiety and the Semitic imaginary: Shem Tov Isaac ibn Ardutiel de Carrión and his critics
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Wacks, David [1]
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[1] University of Oregon
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- Localización: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, ISSN-e 1754-6567, ISSN 1754-6559, Vol. 4, Nº. 2, 2012, págs. 167-184
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
The period in which Shem Tov ibn Isaac Ardutiel (Santob de Carrión) was writing – the fourteenth century – was a period of intense vernacularization of literary practice in Castile. Shem Tov has long been imagined as a model of multiculturality, and the lasting impact of his diglossic literary legacy is undeniable; he is a compelling case study of the role of Hebrew literature in the age of Hispano-Romance vernacularity. Yet, he writes at a time when Spanish Jewish authors voice considerable ambivalence about the practice of vernacular literature. In this article I offer a new reading of Proverbios morales and his Hebrew Debate between the Pen and the Scissors as veiled critiques of Castilian literary practice and a defense of Hebrew in an age of vernacularization; I also suggest that the ambivalence and anxiety that characterized Jewish approaches to the vernacular are mirrored by modern critics of the literature of Spain's Jews. Spanish criticism of Shem Tov's work reveals conflictive modern Spanish attitudes toward the role of Jewish authors in a national literary legacy.
