Prepared for session 366 on the 2017 convention program, Shapes of the English Major Today, arranged by the ADE Ad Hoc Committee on the English Major, this presentation summarizes trends in bachelor’s degree completions using time series degree completions data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS), as compiled by the National…[Read more]

Panel Title Writing Studies at the MLA: The Past and Future of English Studies

Paper given for the LLC Middle English Forum’s roundtable on “Campus Chaucer. ” See also separately uploaded PowerPoint slides (not strictly necessary; the bold in the text, however, refers to a change of slide). Contains many informational links. Accompanying PowerPoint: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6BW3B

PowerPoint to accompany paper (http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6GP71) given in #s280 at the 2017 MLA Convention.

In this paper, I show how, as a philologist, William Strunk’s approach to language was a rich historical and rhetorical experience far from the prescriptivism E.B. White ascribes to him in the first edition of The Elements of Style (1959). An interesting historical parallel exists between Strunk’s tenure as a PhD student in philology at Cornell…[Read more]

In this essay, I discuss three Hebrew translations made by Sephardic Jews writing in from a position of a double diaspora (from ‘Zion’ and from Sepharad, or Spain): Joseph Tsarfati’s Celestina by Fernando de Rojas, Jacob Algaba’s Amadís de Gaula by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, and Joseph Hakohen’s Historia general de las Indias by Francisco L…[Read more]

Ziyad ibn ‘Amir al-Kinani (Granada, ca. 1250) and the 101 Nights
(Granada, 1234) are two examples of Andalusi popular fiction that provide important
information for our understanding of works of early Castilian fiction such as the Libro del
Caballero Zifar. The two Andalusi works provide evidence of a bilingual culture of
storytelling that n…[Read more]

Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor is a medieval romance interpolated into a thirteenthcentury
account of the struggles of the Kings of Asturias (eighth-ninth centuries)
with the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordova. In this essay I demonstrate how the
chronicler mapped political concerns onto courtly adventure narrative in order to
promote ideologies of…[Read more]

Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor is a medieval romance interpolated into a thirteenthcentury
account of the struggles of the Kings of Asturias (eighth-ninth centuries)
with the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordova. In this essay I demonstrate how the
chronicler mapped political concerns onto courtly adventure narrative in order to
promote ideologies of…[Read more]

Shem Tov ibn Isaac Ardutiel (Santob de Carrión) lived in the fourteenth century, period of intense vernacularization of literary practice in Castile. Shem Tov has long been imagined as a model of multiculturality, and the lasting impact of his diglossic literary legacy is undeniable. He is a compelling case study of the role of Hebrew literature…[Read more]

Wacks proposes a new, comprehensive look at the Romance context of the Hebrew Literature of Christian Iberia. He surveys the extant criticism and provides an overview of key texts and their relationship to vernacular literary and cultural practices. Along the way, he provides some explanation for the intellectual and institutional practices that,…[Read more]

The author surveys Spanish and Hebrew literary criticism to determine to what extent the Hebrew language production of medieval Iberian authors have been reflected or omitted from Spanish literary history and draws some conclusions as to the reasons why or why not.

The author argues that Juan Manuel’s willingness to embrace Andalusī narrative genres and materials, including a number of proverbs which he quotes in the original Arabic, seems on the surface to run counter to his official
narrative of Reconquest. However, this apparent contradiction is typical both of the colonial society in which Don Juan Ma…[Read more]

The author argues that Juan Manuel’s willingness to embrace Andalusī narrative genres and materials, including a number of proverbs which he quotes in the original Arabic, seems on the surface to run counter to his official
narrative of Reconquest. However, this apparent contradiction is typical both of the colonial society in which Don Juan Ma…[Read more]

In this article the author argues for the influence of the Hebrew and Arabic maqama on the Libro de buen amor (Juan Ruiz) and Spill (Jaume Roig) based on the narratological disposition of the narrator/protagonist.

In this article the author compares the exemplo of Don Yllan and the Dean de Santiago, #11 in Don Juan Manuel’s Conde Lucanor (ca. 1335) with an earlier Hebrew analogue found in the Hebrew Meshal Haqadmoni (ca. 1285) of fellow Castilian author Isaac ibn Sahula. A thorough analysis of the rhetorical and narrative style of both versions reveals that…[Read more]

The work of the Judeo-Spanish poet and exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra (d. 1167 C.E.) featuring the language of the Song is perhaps the best showcase of the interplay between sacred and secular in Hebrew Andalusī literature. When it comes to the Song, Ibn Ezra literally wrote the book on it, a commentary that gives equal treatment to its literal and…[Read more]

providing a context for the anecdotes and fables narrated by the characters in each text.
The way in which the performativity of each text is constructed reflects their respective
cultural and literary heritage, as well as the performative nature of Medieval Arabic
literature in general. The two texts represent a convergence of different oral…[Read more]