Double Diaspora in Sephardic Literature: Jewish Cultural Production Before and After 1492 [Hardcover]

The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

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Winner, 2015 Jewish Book Awards, Sephardic Culture

David A. Wacks is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon. He is author ofFraming Iberia: Maqamat and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spainand editor (with Michelle Hamilton and Sarah Portnoy) ofWine, Women, and Song: Hebrew and Arabic Literature in Medieval Iberia.

Double Diasporawill enrich the multiple fields it participates inmedieval and romance studies, Sephardic history, Hebrew literature, and many more.

Wacks makes a crucial first foray toward a more nuanced critical understanding of the literary world of Spanish Jewry. His attempts to renegotiate the boundaries of the canon and extend Iberian literature to include non-Castilian and even non-Iberian texts raise profound questions about how Spanish literature should be studied and taught.

Wacks's book uncovers the experience and enriches the academic field of Hebrew and Romance literary studies by opening up a whole new set of questions and by suggesting new approaches to the study of Jewish cultural heritage, which, as Wacks makes clear, should always take into account the surrounding non-Jewish lc•