The Converso's Return : Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture

Dalia Kandiyoti

ISBN 10: 1503612295 / ISBN 13: 9781503612297

Edité par Stanford University Press Aug 2020, 2020

A propos de cet article

Neuware - 'The Converso's Return is a study of recent fiction and memoirs by U.S. Latinx, Spanish, French, and Turkish authors about the current revival of Iberian Jewish history, in particular, the largely forced conversions of Jews to Catholicism in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal. This seemingly remote history has been the topic of a substantial library of contemporary literary and popular writing, especially since the 1992 quincentennial commemorations of the 1492 conversions and expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and the conquest of the Americas. The recent claiming of Sephardi converso ancestry by Christian (and to a much lesser extent Muslim) descendants in the Americas, Europe, and Turkey has taken place simultaneously with the fictional and testimonial writing about conversos and their descendants by authors on several continents. What is it about conversos that has sparked their imagination What do we learn and rethink about conversions' afterlives including their resurgence in the present, and how does this help us understand how and why we return to and resuscitate the past The literary writing in English, Spanish, French, and Turkish about the fate of the converts through the centuries that The Converso's Return investigates together help us complicate ideas about conversos, contemporary historical consciousness, the role of genealogy in culture, collective memory, missing/imagined archives, Sephardi identities, and world literature'--.

N° de réf. du vendeur 9781503612297

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Converso's Return : Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture
• Éditeur: Stanford University Press Aug 2020
• Date de parution: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 1503612295
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9781503612297
• Reliure: Buch
• État de l'article: Neu
• Dimensions: 238 L x 161 H x 29 P (en millimètres) 238 millimètres de largeur par 161 millimètres de hauteur par 29 millimètres de profondeur
• Poids: 618 grammes

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

Five centuries after the forced conversion of Spanish and Portuguese Jews to Catholicism, stories of these conversos' descendants uncovering long-hidden Jewish roots have come to light and taken hold of the literary and popular imagination. This seemingly remote history has inspired a wave of contemporary writing involving hidden artifacts, familial whispers and secrets, and clandestine Jewish ritual practices pointing to a past that had been presumed dead and buried. The Converso's Return explores the cultural politics and literary impact of this reawakened interest in converso and crypto-Jewish history, ancestry, and identity, and asks what this fascination with lost-and-found heritage can tell us about how we relate to and make use of the past.

Dalia Kandiyoti offers nuanced interpretations of contemporary fictional and autobiographical texts about crypto-Jews in Cuba, Mexico, New Mexico, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Turkey. These works not only imagine what might be missing from the historical archive but also suggest an alternative historical consciousness that underscores uncommon convergences of and solidarities within Sephardi, Christian, Muslim, converso, and Sabbatean histories. Steeped in diaspora, Sephardi, transamerican, Iberian, and world literature studies, The Converso's Return illuminates how the converso narrative can enrich our understanding of history, genealogy, and collective memory.

À propos de l?auteur

Dalia Kandiyoti is Associate Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York.