Wacks, David
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Item Open Access Translation in Diaspora: Sephardic Spanish-Hebrew translations in the sixteenth century(Benjamins, 2016) Wacks, David A.In this essay, I discuss three Hebrew translations made by Sephardic Jews writing in from a position of a double diaspora (from ‘Zion’ and from Sepharad, or Spain): Joseph Tsarfati’s Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, Jacob Algaba’s Amadís de Gaula by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, and Joseph Hakohen’s Historia general de las Indias by Francisco López de Gómara. These Sephardic translators sought to appropriate these very popular Spanish texts and place them in the service of a Jewish literary culture, one whose values were often at odds with those of the original authors and readers of the Spanish originals. At the same time, the Sepharadim were deeply identified with Iberian vernacular culture, and these translations were a form of cultural capital upon which they traded in the broader Jewish context of Western Christendom and the Ottoman Empire. The lens of diaspora can help us to better understand Sephardic translation from Spanish to Hebrew by focusing on the significance of language use, cultural identity, and Jewish literary culture in the Mediterranean world of the sixteenth century.Item Open Access In Memoriam Ángel Sáenz-Badillos Pérez, 1940-2013(La corónica, 2014) Wacks, David A.Summary of biography and scholarly career of Ángel Sáenz-Badillos, prominent Spanish HebraistItem Open Access Vernacular Anxiety and the Semitic Imaginary: Shem Tov Isaac ibn Ardutiel de Carrión and his Critics(Taylor and Francis, 2012) Wacks, David A.Shem Tov ibn Isaac Ardutiel (Santob de Carrión) lived in the fourteenth century, 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. Shem Tov writes at a time when Spanish Jewish authors voice considerable ambivalence about the practice of vernacular literature. In this essay 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. 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 is revealing of conflictive modern Spanish attitudes toward the role of Jewish authors in a national literary legacy. In the second part of this essay I demonstrate how the anxieties that characterized Jewish-Christian literary relations in 14th century Castile are still alive and well in 19th and 20th century Spanish scholarship.Item Open Access Conflicted Identity and Colonial Adaptation in Petrus Alfonsi’s Dialogus contra judaeos and Disciplina clericalis(Brill, 2012) Wacks, David A.Item Open Access 2011 Oregon Humanities Center Work in Progress Talk(2011-04-11) Wacks, David A.Discussion of how current critical thinking about diasporic culture can bring Judaic studies approaches to Sephardic literature up to date. Examples from 13th century Spanish Hebrew (Sephardic) author Jacob ben Elazar and 16th century Sephardic author Solomon ibn VergaItem Open Access Recycling the Troubadours in Hebrew: Todros Abulafia, Hebrew Troubadour at the Court of Alfonso X(2011-02-18T18:06:48Z) Wacks, David A.Troubadours both Provencal and Galician Portuguese were regulars at the court of Alfonso X of Castile-Leon (1252-1284). The “Learned King” himself was a prolific composer of Galician-Portuguese verse both sacred and profane and was a patron of poets working in a number of languages. One of these, Todros Abulafia, was exceptional among his Christian counterparts in that he composed troubadouresque verse in Hebrew as opposed to Provencal or Galician-Portuguese, and among Jewish poets in that he enjoyed the direct patronage of a Christian sovereign whom he celebrated in his poems. Abulafia’s poetry is typical of writers working in Diaspora in that his literary practice reflects both the Jewish community to which he belongs as well as the greater community of Romance-speaking Iberia. It reflects the socio-economic relationship between Jewish community and sovereign as well as the linguistic and artistic relationships between the Hebrew and Romance poetic traditions. This tension between sovereignty and Jewish community, between Hebrew and Romance, so characteristic of life in diaspora, fuels certain innovations in Abulafia’s poetry. He pioneers in Hebrew a poetic voice that goes beyond the stock tropes and commonplaces of previous Hebrew tradition, to embrace the more personal and self-conscious lyric of the troubadours. He elegizes a Christian King’s patronage in a language the monarch is sure not to understand. All of this is expressed in an idiom laced with images and set phrases drawn from the Prophets and Song of Songs of the Hebrew Bible. In this paper I give a full accounting of Abulafia’s entanglement with troubadouresque poetics and how the sociopolitics of diaspora inform his literary practice.Item Open Access Toward a History of Hispano-Hebrew Literature in its Romance Context(http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/, 2010) Wacks, David A.Wacks proposes a new, comprehensive look at the Romance context of the Hebrew Literature of Christian Iberia. He surveys the extant criticism and provides an overview of key texts and their relationship to vernacular literary and cultural practices. Along the way, he provides some explanation for the intellectual and institutional practices that, until recently, have discouraged such an approachItem Open Access Is Spain's Hebrew Literature 'Spanish'?(Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2008) Wacks, David A.Discussion of the position of Spanish Hebrew literature in Spanish Literary History vis-a-vis the history of Spanish Hebraism.Item Open Access Between Sacred and Secular: Abraham ibn Ezra and the Song of Songs(Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2004) Wacks, David A.Item Open Access Reconquest Colonialism and Andalusi Narrative Practice in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) Wacks, David A.Item Open Access Reading Jaume Roig's Spill and the Libro de buen amor in the Iberian maqama tradition(Routledge, 2006-07) Wacks, David A.Item Open Access Don Yllan and the Egyptian Sorceror: Vernacular commonality and literary diversity in medieval Castile(CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS, 2005) Wacks, David A.In this article the author compares the exemplo of Don Yllan and the Dean de Santiago, #11 in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (ca. 1335) with an earlier Hebrew analogue found in the Hebrew Meshal Haqadmoni (ca. 1285) of fellow Castilian author Isaac ibn Sahula. A thorough analysis of the rhetorical and narrative style of both versions reveals that the two tales shared a common source in Castilian oral tradition. The appearance of the tale in an earlier Hebrew text from Castile (the only other known version in any language) calls into question the originality of Don Juan Manuel's most famous exemplo, suggesting a productive interplay between a common oral tradition in Castilian and coexisting literary traditions in Hebrew and Castilian.Item Open Access The Performativity of Ibn al-Muqaffa`'s Kalila wa-Dimna and Al-Maqamat al-Luzumiyya of al-Saraqusti(Brill, 2003) Wacks, David A.