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Yehonatan Naeh | Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

Yehonatan Naeh

Department of Spanish and Latin American Studies

Supervisor: Prof. Ruth Fine

Subject:  Conversion and captivity in Spain's Golden Age literature

Abstract:  The project studies Spanish literature of the Golden Age, mainly the innovative oeuvre of Miguel de Cervantes. Its claim is that this literature was profoundly impregnated with the notions of conversion and transformation. Spanish society, dominated by the Inquisition, was obsessed with ideas of homogeneous identity and purity of blood, and clang resolutely to rigid categories of hierarchy and class. Yet at the same time it witnessed the appearance of diverse heterodoxies and realized the paradoxical results of mass-conversion: by getting access into Old Christian society, the Otherness of the Conversos and their conflictual hybridity became a threat from within to a society thriving for homogeneity and unchangeable social categories.
The investigation is framed by three main topics, each of which will constitute a chapter in the planned dissertation: forced conversion vs. voluntary self-transformation; the concept of captivity in relation to conversion; and reading and writing as a mechanism for transformation.
Chapter 1 will examine the relation between the restricting extra-textual reality and the liberating force of literature. While in the extra-textual world identity was conceived as a static definition of the individual, Golden Age literature is flooded with allusions to conversion of identity. This chapter is dedicated to the analysis of voluntary conversion stemming from free will rather than oppression.
Chapter 2 will deal with captivity and its relation to conversion. Captivity, like conversion and the act of reading and writing, involves an experience of border crossing. The captive crosses different boarders when entering the realm of captivity, real or figurative, and later may cross them again, upon returning to her or his home environment. The possible appropriation of alien cultural paradigms renders the returning captive a hybrid, potentially dangerous being, just like the convert.
Chapter 3 will demonstrate the multiple manners in which the act of reading and writing functions as a fundamental mechanism for self-transformation and conversion. Reflecting Spain's search for identity, Golden Age Spanish literature is characterized by an acute auto-reflexive, meta-poetic consciousness. The reader, through the literary characters and by the very act of reading, could defy the limits of his own social categories, experience numerous possibilities of transformations, and participate in the creation of possible mental worlds.