ext_122771 ([identity profile] lethargic-man.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] lethargic_man 2006-02-19 05:29 pm (UTC)

Re: a poetry sefardi which persists in Marroc

Here we go. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says:
Don Quixote has been used to support theories of its author's New Christian origin and sympathies. The Spanish critic Américo Castro, has suggested that Don Quixote could only be the work of a New Christian, living on the periphery of Spanish society. The novelist's father, Rodrigo de Cervantes, was a surgeon (a profession adopted by many Conversos). Miguel de Cervantes himself once had a mistress, Ana Franca de Rojas, who was a descendant of Fernando de Rojas, the Converso author of the Celestina. Another factor cited is Cervantes' aversion to intolerance and to distinctions between "Old" and "New" Christians. In his plays Los baños de Argel and La gran sultana he presents both Christian and Jewish points of view on religion. In Los alcaldes de Daganzo Cervantes sarcastically derides the idea that limpieza (purity of descent) should be the prime qualification for holding office. While Sancho Panza is vocal about his limpieza (Don Quixote, 1, ch. 21; 2, ch. 4) and his dislike of Jews (2, ch. 8), Don Quixote himself is reticent about his background. Cervantes was influenced by the Dialoghi d'amore of Leone Ebreo (Judah Abrabanel) and when he writes in Don Quixote (1, ch. 9) about "a better and older language [than Arabic]," he is presumably referring to the Hebrew language. Dominique Aubier, a Catholic convert to Judaism, sees Don Quixote as "the standard-bearer of Jewish revolt in the cause of free expression and against the persecution of the Inquisition." On the basis of Jewish mystical sources she has reinterpreted the novel symbolically as a three-sided discussion involving science, Judeo-Christianity, and the Kabbalah.
So, there (and in my previous post) is the evidence; draw your own conclusions. :o)

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