Marginal Voices: Studies in ConversoLiterature of Medieval and Golden Age Spain

by Amy I. Aronson-Friedman, Gregory B. Kaplan

Overview

The conversos of late medieval and Golden Age Spain were Christians whose Jewish ancestors had been forced to change faiths within a society that developed a preoccupation with pure Christian lineage. The aims of this book is to shed new light on the cultural impact of this social climate, in which public suspicion of the religious sincerity of conversos became widespread and scrutiny by the Inquisition came to impede social advancement and threaten life and property. The bulk of the essays center on literary works, including lesser known and canonical pieces, which are analyzed by scholars who reveal the heterogeneous nature of textual voices that are informed by an awareness of the marginal status of conversos.
Contributors are Gregory B. Kaplan, Ana Benito, Patricia Timmons, David Wacks, Bruce Rosenstock, Laura Delbrugge, Michelle Hamilton, Deborah Skolnik Rosenberg, Kevin Larsen and Luis Bejarano.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004214408
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/03/2012
Series:	Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World Series , #46
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Amy Aronson-Friedman, Ph.D. (2000) in Hispanic Linguistics and Medieval Spanish Literature, Temple University, is Associate Professor of Spanish and ESOL at Valdosta State University. She has published extensively on the conversos of medieval Spain.
Gregory B. Kaplan, Ph.D. (1994) in Medieval Spanish Philology, University of Pennsylvania, is Professor of Spanish at the University of Tennessee. He has published a number of studies on converso literature including The Evolution of ‘Converso’ Literature (UP of Florida, 2002).

Table of Contents

List of Contributors vii

Editors' Introduction to Marginal Voices: Studies in Converso Literature of Medieval and Golden Age Spain Amy I. Aronson-Friedman Gregory B. Kaplan 1

The Inception of Limpieza de Sangre (Purity of Blood) and its Impact in Medieval and Golden Age Spain Gregory B. Kaplan 19

Inquisition and the Creation of the Other Ana Benito 43

Conflicted Identity and Colonial Adaptation in Petrus Alfonsi's Dialogus contra judaeos and Disciplina clericalis David A. Wacks 69

Convtvencia and Conversion in Gonzalo de Berceo's "El judïezno" Patricia Timmons 91

Against the Pagans: Alonso de Cartagena, Francisco de Vitoria, and Converso Political Theology Bruce Rosenstock 117

Pragmatism, Patience and the Passion: The Converso Element in the Summa de paciencia (1493) and the Thesoro de la passion (1494) Laura Delbrugge 141

Text and Context: A Judeo-Spanish Version of the Danza de la muerte Michelle Hamilton 161

The Converso and the Spanish Picaresque Novel Deborah Skolnik Rosenberg 183

Cervantes, Don Quijote, and the Hebrew Scriptures: The Case of the Jacob and Joseph Stories Kevin S. Larsen 207

Anti-Semitic Discourse or the Voice of a Disguised Converso in a Seventeenth-Century Spanish Treatise Luis G. Bejarano 233

Index 249