Exile and Empire. Sephardic literary networks in early modern Italy

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My doctoral project revisits and reimagines the dialectic of exile and domicile described by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. I aim to apply his ideas specifically to the works of Sephardic authors printed in Italian territories, exploring not just how texts express religious identities, but how their publication itself was implicated in the formation of Sephardic communities.The Sephardic community formed one of the most cohesive groups in a world where the modern idea of a nation-state was yet to emerge. This is illustrated by their (self-)identification with the nación hebrea or nação portuguesa, understood as a religious or ethnic community and unrelated to government. My doctoral project will trace Sephardic representations of the nation, emphasising the role of cultural and literary relationships in the formation of a unified group identity. In doing so, I will place them in a pan-European intellectual context. The case of Sephardic authors can illuminate recent theories of (trans-)nationality, as well as related questions of modernity and construction of identity by foregrounding its articulation as a conscious choice rather than the "discovery" of a single inherent characteristic typical of Inquisitorial narratives.The point of departure for my doctoral thesis is Samuel Usque's Consolaçam, published in Ferrara in 1553, a work unique in the Sephardic literary panorama of the time as it was written in Portuguese, a language normally reserved for everyday communication. Only a year after the publication of the Consolaçam, the very same printing press in Ferrara released Bernardim Ribeiro's Menina e moça. a pastoral narrative replete with cabbalistic symbolism. By reading these texts alongside one another I hope to contribute to a reading of Menina e moça as a crypto-Jewish text by examining its publication history and Usque's possible personal involvement in it. I will also place Consolaçam in its historical context as an active rebuttal of both Christian attacks and the apocalyptic trends of Jewish historiography. Finally, I will consider the role of literary patron Dona Gracia Nasi, to whom the Consolaçam is dedicated, in the formation of a wider Jewish intellectual community.The second part of my research will examine the works of Isaac Cardoso and Miguel da Silveira. In seventeenth-century Venice, Cardoso published Las excelencias de los hebreos, a fierce refutation of anti-Jewish literary production. He grounds his argument in Greek and Roman historiography and references Church fathers or contemporary historians, while also inserting himself into a wider tradition of Jewish apologists. These religious links make of Excelencias a text key to the Sephardic nation and, more widely, attest to the success in their preservation of a Jewish intellectual culture. My thesis will illustrate Cardoso's role in Sephardic intellectual production by placing his work in context alongside El Macabeo, an epic poem by Miguel da Silveira published in Naples. Written ostensibly in support of the Portuguese colonial effort, El Macabeo makes frequent references to Tasso, Góngora and Camões, and was published with the support of a local nobleman. The subject matter, however, makes of it the work of a potential judaizante. For the purposes of my thesis, his poem, and his personal relationship with Cardoso, will provide evidence of intellectual exchanges within the Sephardic diaspora, as well as of its engagement with mainstream Christian literary circles back in Spain. Recent work by the Sorbonne AGON project will provide methods to place these works within the broader context of Jewish-Christian polemics. I will also draw on sociological and historicist theories to develop an interdisciplinary approach that lies beyond the scope of my hitherto education.