Language:
English
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
Places and Forms of Encounter in Jewish Literatures; Transfer, Mediality and Situativity
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2021) 257-277
Keywords:
Literature History and criticism 21st century
;
Food in literature
;
Food Terminology
;
Sephardic cooking
;
Ladino language in literature
Abstract:
In contemporary memoirs and novels concerned with the Sephardic heritage in general and the Judeo-Spanish language in particular, food names and allusions to the Sephardic cuisine often constitute the last remains of Judeo-Spanish. By highlighting how food, language and memory intertwine in texts from Turkey, France and the US, this contribution points out parallels between the transmission of linguistic and culinary heritage. Food serves here as an anchoring point for a collective culinary memory in which food names are not only markers for a vanishing world but also part of a literary archiving of heritage culture and language. Remembering food often implies a nostalgia bound to imagined traditions; the myth of a somewhat ‘pure’ cuisine is to be seen in analogy to ideas of a ‘pure’ language. Yet, although literary representations of both the Sephardic cuisine and the Judeo-Spanish language are often marked by essentialism and nostalgia, the close readings of the texts uncover that Judeo-Spanish food names bear traces of a rich heritage made of various influences.
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