Vernacular Anxiety and the Semitic Imaginary: Shem Tov Isaac ibn Ardutiel de Carrión and his Critics
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Date
2012
Authors
Wacks, David A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Shem Tov de Carrion, Proverbios morales, Santob de Carrion, Medieval Hebrew literature, Hispano-Hebrew Literature, Medieval Spanish Literature, Debate between the pen and the scissors, Milhemet ha-et ve-ha misparayim, Mahberet, Maqama
Citation
Wacks, David. “Vernacular Anxiety and the Semitic Imaginary: Shem Tov Isaac Ibn Ardutiel De Carrión and His Critics.” Journal of Medieval Iberian Cultural Studies 4.2 (2012): 167–184. Print.