The Bondage of Jews in Spain

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Abstract

Serialized in Istanbul’s “El Tiempo” newspaper in 1875, this Ladino feuilleton presented readers with a dramatized account of Jewish history in Spain leading up to the expulsion and with the establishment of the inquisition. The anonymous author / translator selected sections from the authoritative historical research of Spanish scholar Adolfo de Castro, but the lengthy scholarly account is then dramatized and serialized, becoming a historical roman-feuilleton aimed at providing entertainment as well as education to Ottoman Jewish readers. The Ladino text toes the line between history and fiction, adapting the original work to the feuilletonistic genre and framing the text for the Ladino reader, whose ancestral history it purports to narrate.