ABSTRACT A book published in 2000, El barroco sefardí Abraham Gómez Silveira ( The Sephardic Baroque Abraham Gómez Silveira ), introduced us to this hitherto unknown author, baptised in Castile in 1651, who was educated at the school of the sacred congregation of the Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam. Abraham Gómez Silveira wrote tirelessly in defence of the Mosaic law, and against the false messiahs who were in his opinion Jesus Christ and the famous rabbi of Smyrna, Sabbataï Tsevi (died in 1676). This stance was in direct opposition to the inquisitorial Spain of his time, and yet his rhetoric and poetics were deeply influenced by Spanish literary culture. Gómez Silveira admired Queved, one of the greatest Baroque poets of Spain, and this avowed, sometimes rabid, anti‐Semite left a deep impression on him. This surprising kinship reveals an analogy of position in their respective groups: a radical and very personal desire for orthodoxy which, together with their verbal intemperance, condemns them, paradoxically, to semi‐clandestinity.
ABSTRACT Literature written by the Moriscos during their diaspora in North Africa, especially in the 17th century, offers three fundamental pillars for its analysis: the languages in which it is written, their emotional and intellectual relationship with their land of origin and their host countries, and, finally, religion. Through the combination of these pillars, it can be observed how Morisco texts are essentially Islamic texts, but, at the same time, texts embedded in the Spanish culture of their time. This dual nature is also expressed in two different languages and presents an unusual blend that challenges established critical labels, especially those that a priori radically separate the Islamic personality from Spanish literary culture.
ABSTRACT Whereas there is no consensus among contemporary scholars in defining the Converso diaspora and its criteria of belonging, most of them highlighted its geographical, economic, cultural and political dependence on early modern Iberian empires. Such hermeneutic dissonance explains why early modern representations of the Converso diaspora (whether hostile or sympathetic to the Conversos, Ibero‐centric or Jewish‐centred) were epistemologically reductive, by depicting the Converso diaspora in three main ways: as a quintessential enemy of Iberian empires, as its most successful agents or as endorsing an idea of a non‐sovereign counter‐empire.
