From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso, a study in seventeenthcentury
marranism and Jewish apologetics.
In Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination, Casteel builds both on the work of major theorists of Caribbean hybridity such as Stuart Hall, on the recent work of theorists such as Bryan Cheyette, Efraim Sicher, and Linda Weinhouse on the role of the Jew in post-colonial literature, and on the considerable critical and imaginative literature on the subject of Sephardim, crypto-Jews, conversos, and
marranism. Thus, throughout the book she reiterates the notion of Caribbean creolization, asserting that "all Caribbean identities are variegated, mixed, and to some extent mysterious" (81).
a language of authentic and inauthentic religious transformation taken from the discourse of Judaism and
marranism' (p.
Whether one accepts Yovel's interpretation of primary and secondary evidence or not, his conclusion that
Marranism, and its dualistic conflicts, produced an extraordinary series of intellectual and secular forces of modern thinking is convincing and worthy of thoughtful meditation and continuing discussion.
As such, they were the early adopters of
Marranism: willing (or understanding the necessity) to subsume their Judaism under a cloak of ostentatious Catholicism.
Masks in the mirror;
Marranism in Jewish experience.
The theme of
marranism, crypto-Judaism, conversos, and New Christians is approached in many of the essays in the volume, though with little consistency and even fewer systematic conclusions.
A Study in Seventeenth-Century
Marranism and Jewish Apologetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
In that more restricted arena, I argue that
Marranism is the particular form of Jewishness which is most pertinent to our understanding, and that Marlowe's The Jew of Malta is the crucial initiatory text.
Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-century
Marranism and Jewish Apologetics, 2nd edn (Seattle, 198 1); Jonathan Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Kews, 1585-1713 (London, 1990).
From Spanish Court to Italian Guetto: Isaac Cardoso, a Study in Seventeenth-Century
Marranism and Jewish Apologetics.